Frigid Warrior
by jake111
Summary: War never changes, it exists, a shard of ice in the heart of humanity, cracking eternal, yet refusing to shatter. Madison Victory knew this chill, and in the Great War of 2077, the ice entombed her. And when she emerged from the frost, her world shattered, left with nothing but the chill. And this frigid warrior was ready to show those amateurs how professionals operated.
1. Chapter 1

Ugh… what the hell is going on?

I'm still in the decontamination pod… why am I still in the decontamination pod? Where are the Vault-Tec people?

The glass was frosted, not foggy, frosted… this wasn't a decontamination pod. What the hell is going on?

There was movement outside of the pod. "This is the one, here."

Someone in full hazmat gear, a woman, and a bald man in a leather jacket. "Open it."

His voice was low and rough. They were in front of Nate's pod, the woman in hazmat gear pulled a release.

An alarm, Nate's pod opened with a hiss. He stirred, still cradling Shaun against his chest. "Is it over? Are we okay?"

Deep Voice again, "Almost. Everything is going to be fine." Were they an extraction team? Part of Vault-Tec maybe? Was the military still operational?

The woman tried to take Shaun, "Come here… Come here baby…"

Nate resisted, pulling Shaun back, "No, wait," the woman kept trying to take Shaun. "No, I've got him."

Just let him hold Shaun you idiots. God, this is why I only worked with Special Operations. Deep Voice spoke again, "Let the boy go." He drew a gun, a 44. Pistol, "I'm only gonna tell you once!"

What the hell is wrong with him? I start pounding on the glass. I have to do something, anything. I have to stop this. Nate and the woman kept fighting over Shaun, Nate clearly stronger but weakened by the time in the pod. "I'm not giving you Shaun!"

I have to do something, I bring my leg up and kick the door, but it doesn't budge.

A single booming shot, Nate slumps back in his pod, blood pouring down his face. The woman takes Shaun as Nate's grip goes limp.

No! I pound on the glass, I kick at the door, I search the pod for some kind of emergency release. I have to get out. I have to save him; I have to save my son.

I have to kill these people.

Shaun starts crying, the man with the gun turns. "Goddamnit! Get the kid out of here and let's go…"

They close Nate's pod, the woman walks out of sight, taking my son with her. The man turns to my pod, putting his face right up to the glass. I instinctively memorize every detail, tan skin, a deep scar running down the length of the left side of his face, a scruffy round beard, dark eyes, a muscular neck. "At least we still have the backup." He walked away and I started outright thrashing. I have to get out!

A computerized female voice came through hidden speakers, "Cryogenics sequence reinitialized." The temperature began to drop, some kind of gas was pumped into to the pod, and everything started to fade. A few seconds later, oblivion.

I came into consciousness again coughing and sputtering, that alarm was blaring again. The computerized voice was speaking again, "Critical failure in Cryogenics Array. All Vault residents must vacate immediately." I pounded on the glass again, and this time the door came open. I threw myself out of the pod, I had to get to Nate, the cryogenics could have slowed down his body processes enough, if I got to him soon enough, I might be able to get him to an infirmary. The Vault had to have an infirmary, I could pump him full of stims, hopefully they had an auto-doc but I had enough medical training that I could at least attempt performing surgery myself.

My legs refused to support my weight and I collapsed on to my hands and knees. Without pausing, I crawled over to Nates pod. Latching on the pod, I pulled myself to my feet and yanked the release. Hanging on to the side of the pod on shaky legs, I waited for the door to open. As soon as it did, I knew I was too late. The entry wound was a neat little hole in his temple, blood from it was still frozen on Nate's face. The exit wound was much larger, the bullet had taken a good part of his skull with it. Bits of frozen blood, bone, and grey matter were spread across the pod's headrest. Still, I checked his pulse, nothing. He was gone.

I collapsed in front of his corpse. It wasn't fair, over a decade with special forces, and he's executed in a damn cryopod. Twelve years with the Activity, and all I could do was sit and watch while my husband was executed and my baby stolen. First I'd lost Ming, now I'd lost Nate and Shaun. Then it dawned on me, the nuclear blast as the elevator descended, the world had ended. I hadn't just lost them, I'd lost everything.

Tears threatened to come flooding out, but I held them back. I knew that if I let them start I wouldn't be able to stop. I laid there for a while, just staring up at him. "Madison," when I heard the Russian accented voice, at first I thought I was hallucinating. Then it came again, "Nate, blyad! Madison, are you injured? Do we have hostiles in the area?"

I was grabbed by huge arms and pulled to my feet. I blinked and looked at the bear of a man propping me up, "Mikhail?"

The former Spetsnaz operative gave me a slight shake, "Maddie, I need you to focus. Are there any hostiles in the facility?"

His professionalism managed to snap me back to reality. "No, probably not, a two-man team came in, took Shaun, and executed Nate. The system put me back in cryosleep, so they could have been here five minutes ago, or they could have been here fifty years ago. I don't know, in either case, I guarantee that they've extracted by now." I stepped away, and turned back to Nate.

Enough pity, time to get back to business. I slid the wedding ring off of Nates finger, tucked it in the pocket of my Vault suit, and laid a hand on his knee. "I'll find the people who did this and I'll get Shaun back, I promise." Then I turned back to Mikhail, "Natalya?"

Mikhail shook his head, "dead. Along with everyone else that I could find. It looks like the life support system was turned off and not reactivated for most of the people here. The only reason I can come up for my being alive is some kind of glitch. Everyone else seems to have died of asphyxiation."

I issued a series of four letter words, "I'm sorry Mikhail, Natalya deserved better than that."

Mikhail nodded, "Yes, she did, so did Nathan. We need to clear the Vault, see if anyone else might have survived."

I nodded, then looked at Nate one more time and pushed the lever down, sealing the pod. Then it was back to the matter at hand. The room we were in was easy enough to clear, we checked all of the pods, no survivors, everyone had been asphyxiated.

"Clear." We stepped into the hallway, taking up a standard formation. Mikhail was on point while I took six. It was meant for clearing rooms with a two-man team, though said team was supposed to be armed. But one made do with what one had. Every surface had a fine layer of moisture on it, probably part of the cryogenic array failing.

"I already cleared that room when I came to," Mikhail said as we passed the secondary cryogenics chamber.

There was a tool cart in front of the exit, I tried the door. "It's jammed," The panel was pneumatically sealed, we weren't going to get through this way. I grabbed a screw driver, it wasn't my weapon of choice, but it was better than nothing.

"Hallway clear," we tried a side door across from the secondary cryo room, luckily this one worked. We made our way down the stairs until we reached what appeared to be a security checkpoint next to the reactor room

I took a seat in front of the terminal while Mikhail stood lookout. "No encryption or password, guess security protocols weren't a high priority."

"The end of the world can do that." I chuckled as I logged in, gallows humor at its finest. Apparently the terminal belonged to one of the security officers. I opened the protocol manual, "Apparently the goal of the Vault was some kind of experiment. They wanted to study the effects of cryogenic suspended animation on unsuspecting test subjects." Vault-Tec, a better future underground, I thought sarcastically. I switched to the security logs, "They were only supposed to be in here for a hundred and eighty days until the all-clear message came through. The message never came, the overseer wouldn't let people out, so they rioted, doesn't say how it turned out though."

Mikhail kept his eyes on the hallway, "Think it could have been…"

I stopped him, "No, if that were part of a coup, they would have been releasing everyone, or killing everyone, or just ignoring us entirely. They wouldn't be kidnapping one infant. There's an evacuation tunnel in the overseer's office." Finding nothing else of interest, I shut down the terminal and began searching drawers. I didn't find anything that told me anything else, but I did find a few things that could be useful. A stimpack, always a useful thing to have, and a bundle of cash, I didn't know if it was still in use, but it couldn't hurt to keep some on hand.

Finding nothing else, we moved on, going through a curving tunnel toward the reactor room, "Clear."

When we opened the door, we encountered our first hostile. Said hostile happened to be the largest roach I had ever seen. I know the stereotype, woman freaking out over a bug. First of all, don't be a misogynist, I've had a camel spider crawl up my leg and didn't freak out. Secondly, I'm not exaggerating when I say that this thing was the size of a small dog. "Contact," before I could do anything, Mikhail jumped on it with both boots, killing it with a sickening crunch

He turned to me, "At least they still die like they used to, just need to put a little more weight into it."

I stared at the corpse of the roach, the significance of it dawning on me. I crouched and poked it with the screwdriver. "Mikhail," I spoke slowly, "This is a giant roach."

He looked at me, not understanding. "Da Maddie, your point?"

I flipped the roach over with the screwdriver, "Mikhail, this is a giant roach. Even adding in the excess radiation and FEV exposure that would come with a nuclear war, this wouldn't happen overnight, this wouldn't happen in a year, it wouldn't happen in a decade. This kind of mutation would take a century at least."

Mikhail nodded, "It is safe to drop the assumption that we were only under for a year or two." The revelation didn't seem to faze him, or maybe it was just all the spetznaz training. Mission first and leave everything else for later.

A century, maybe more, I'd said that Shaun could have been taken a long time ago, but that was when it really hit me. The kidnapping could have happened at any point in that time. Assuming that they kept him alive, Shaun could have aged and died a natural death by that point. Mikhail brought me back to reality, "Madison, we need to keep moving."

He was right, we were in an unsecured structure with possible hostiles. Until something changed, I needed to move forward as if this was a standard field op. Secure the area, gather intelligence, gain control of the situation, then devise a next step. I grabbed a security baton that had been laying on a table and we moved on to what appeared to be the Vault mess and staff quarters.

We found nothing in the mess other than coffee cups, the coffee having long turned into a brown stain, and empty beer bottles. All of the appliances seemed functional at least, so that meant power and water were still online. The staff quarters had already been ransacked of all but the beds, either by the security and support staff, the overseer and science team, or Shaun's kidnappers, we couldn't tell. The terminal yielded nothing but an old game on holotape, which I took.

"Room clear." Why we were still making the declaration when it was just the two of us, I didn't know. We were in a completely unfamiliar situation, so we fell back on one of the few constants we had left, our training and protocols.

We made our way into the reactor room, carefully circling around the arcing volts of electricity. The reactor seemed in good repair considering the circumstances, if in need of some regulation and a new surge capacitor. We found another of the giant roaches as well, this time I managed to kill it, bringing my baton down on it as hard as I could. To my surprise, the things proved rather fragile, the strength of the exoskeleton didn't match the increased size. We found only one, another appeared to have been killed by the arcs of electricity, "Room clear."

Then we found our first corpse, a skeleton dressed in a ragged version of the suits we wore. "Any way to tell how old it is?" Mikhail asked as I examined it.

There was a black mark around the corpse, it had gone through a complete decomposition where it lay, a fractured rib and some holes in the suit gave me a good assumption on the cause of death. I was no forensics specialist, but I had enough training to get a basic read on most corpses. "It's old, minimum of eight to twelve years, probably longer. Looks like he was killed by gunshot, probably during the coup."

Considering the terminal dates, the coup had occurred within a year of the bombs dropping, add in the roach evolution, and that put it at a century ago or longer. Despite myself, I had to be a little impressed, Vault-Tec had built a facility that was still functioning after at least a century without a staff, that was one hell of a feat.

Engineering feats aside, we moved on to the next hallway, this was where we encountered the most resistance, if you could call it that. There was a whole swarm of roaches in there, and the damn things could jump. After about two minutes of striking, stomping, and swiping, they were all dead and we moved on to what appeared to be the overseer's office. There was one skeleton in civilian clothing and a couple of overturned chairs, but other than that, no signs of a struggle. On the desk, there were a few things that were truly useful, three stimpacks, a 10mm pistol, and a box of fifty 10mm rounds. I set to work with the terminal while Mikhail searched the rest of the room.

I started with the overseer's instructions, a lot of it was basic stuff. But then there were the fun mini-dictator and mad science protocols, like executing anyone who tried to leave or attempt to save a dying resident. Another mention of the all-clear signal that never came, these people were under the assumption they would be leaving fairly quickly. Then there was an entry about something called a Cryolator, an attempt to make cryogenics portable, that sounded interesting. Then there was the overseer's log. Boy was that a treat.

This man had all of the marks of a middle manager being handed totalitarian authority. A company man through and through, the guy actually seemed to believe the Vault-Tec party line. Moreover, he had no problem whatsoever writing off a member of his staff or conning us into cryosleep. And like any middle manager given too much power, once real adversity reared its ugly head, he cracked. The last entry seemed to indicate he was about to find out how most power mad despots ended up, scared and alone in his office, about to be killed by the masses he'd yearned to control. Hell, if the terminal entries were anything to go by, he was the skeleton lying at my feet.

"Madison, we're clear, come have a look at this." Mikhail was standing in what looked like a secure storage area. He was currently working on getting a display case open. Inside was a strange looking device that I had to assume was the cryolator.

"Let me have a look at it." I brushed him aside and had a look at the case. I gave a low whistle, "Impressive, a grade one Super Guardian with reinforced rotating tumblers on a titanium case with synchronized mag locks." I knelt down for a closer look at the internal mechanism, "go see if you can find me a bobby pin, I doubt we're going to get lucky enough to find a set of lockpicks."

While he went off to ransack the overseer's bedroom, I took a look around the storage cage. It was mostly picked over, but there was another 10mm pistol and some ammunition, and… "Well hello there." Laying under a shelf, half hidden by darkness and dust, was a Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV. I pulled it out and closed it around my left wrist, locking the latch as I did so. My old Activity issue Pip-Boy was in my, now possibly vaporized, basement at home with all of my other old gear. I wiped off the screen and booted up the OS, the whole process brought back the memory of Ming, sitting at her desk in our room, tinkering away while I tried to drag her to bed.

"Madison," Mikhail's voice pulled me out of reverie, again. I really needed to get my head out of the clouds. "Here," he shoved a couple of bobby pins into my hand. "You found a Pip-Boy," he said looking at my wrist.

"Yes, now be quiet for a moment and let me work." I slid the pin and into the lock and pulled out the screwdriver from earlier. It was as solid of a lock as it looked, it took me two pins to find the sweet spot, but on the third pin, I struck gold. There was that ever so distinctive click and then the maglocks released, after that, it was only a matter of opening the case and taking the Cryolator out. The former overseer had even been kind enough to add a strap to sling the weapon over your shoulder. "I present to you, the Cryolator, portable cryogenics on demand, apparently."

Mikhail took the weapon and examined it with hungry eyes, "The cryolator he called it, you Americans and your terrible names. Winter's Breath, that is what we shall call it, General Winter's wrath at my fingertips."

I shook my head, men and their guns. Personally, I prefer a nice blade, swift and silent. "You don't even know if it works yet." I thrust one of the pistols towards him, "Take this, just in case General Winter doesn't want to cooperate." He took it and we moved on, I went back to the terminal and opened the escape tunnel. This tunnel proved to be thankfully devoid of roaches and led us to the Vault entrance.

The Vault entrance contained the most skeletons we'd seen so far, two, as well as two roaches. We stomped the roaches to death and unsealed the door to the rest of the vault. Once the bugs were cleared, we went over the room with a fine toothed comb, no more weapons, no more meds, but we did find another Pip-Boy for Mikhail. Using the adapter plug on the Pip-Boy, we were able to get the main door of the vault open. A quick sweep of the elevator room and we could officially declare the facility secure.

"So, what now?" Mikhail asked, casting a look towards the vault, towards Nate and Natalya.

"Now," I said stepping onto the elevator.

"Now, we see what the new world has in store for us."

 **….**

 **Ok guys, this is my newest project, some of you might be coming from my last project, An Imperial Lily. This is a continuation of another one of my stories, Shadows in the Tunnel. I'm eventually going to rewrite that, it was initially meant as a prequel to this story but took on a life of its own.**

 **Beside the point. Anyway, tell me what you guys think, about the content, the title, or whatever you want to tell me. I'm not sure about the current title, so that might change depending on feedback from you guys.**

 **Also, and this feels lazy, but I've got to say it. Feel free to tell me if some things seem like they don't make sense, this is all part of a broader story and sometimes when I'm writing I lose track of what's in my head and what I've published.**

 **I'm going to try and get out at least one chapter a week, publishing every Friday, another one on Thursday when it.**

 **Either way R &R people,**

 **Later** **people.**


	2. Chapter 2

The sunlight blinded us as we emerged on the surface, considering we hadn't seen sunlight in who knows how long, it should have done more than that. A side effect of the cryostasis probably stopped it from outright searing our corneas. Once our eyes adjusted, we were afforded a remarkable view of the ravaged landscape. The ground was mostly a dull brown with leafless trees and aging ruins scattered across the landscape. In the distance, you could see what had to be the decaying remains of Boston All in all, it was better than what I'd been expecting.

China was my prime suspect in launching the attack. Our best intelligence had estimated China had a stockpile of roughly seven thousand and three hundred nukes, with a little under eighteen hundred on active standby. At any given moment, we estimated roughly two hundred of those were pointed at Washington DC, a hundred a piece for New York and Los Angeles, and varying numbers for everywhere else. If I remembered correctly, Boston was slated for about twenty. I'm not an expert in nuclear annihilation, but this definitely wasn't the result of twenty high yield nuclear weapons. I would say five at most.

Mikhail and I swept the perimeter around the vault entrance, no hostiles, not even the roaches. After that, we searched the area for supplies. We found some ammo, a stimpack, and some other minutiae that might come in handy later, then we began making our way back down the hill. Memories came rushing back as we descended, having my morning coffee, watching the news, going to comfort Shaun, it had been a normal morning. Then the sirens went off, everyone screaming and panicking, sprinting down the street, Shaun in Nate's arms, Mikhail and Natalya close behind us. Climbing the very hill we were coming down now, the soldiers, the people being left out to die. The whole world had gone to hell in less than a minute.

We reached the bottom and crossed the bridge to the street, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. "Contact," I spun around and leveled my pistol at the possible hostile, knowing that Mikhail was following suit. The contact, as it turned out, was a Mister Handy trimming the bushes in front of my house.

It saw us through one of its robotic eyes and whirled around. "As I live and breath," it exclaimed as it hovered over to us. "It _really_ is you, Miss Madison, Mister Volkov!"

What's it talking about? I looked at it in confusion for a moment, then the realization dawned on me. "Codsworth?" I asked tentatively, "You're… still here?"

"Well of course I'm still here." He said in that cheery English accent. "Surely you don't think a little radiation could deter the pride of General Atomics International." He poked an eyestalk at me, "But you seem the worse for wear. Best not let the hubby see you in that state. Where is Sir, by the way?"

I slid the pistol into my pocket, emotion burning in my throat, and out of the blue I hugged the damn robot. Strange, yes, irrational, probably, did I nearly get a burn on my hand from his thruster, oh yes. But at that moment, he was a little piece of my old life that hadn't been destroyed. "He's gone Codsworth, He was killed and they took Shaun." Tears came rushing out, this time I didn't do anything to stop them.

Codsworth didn't have the ability to display body language, but I could almost feel him shaking his nonexistent head. "Ma'am… these things you're saying. These… terrible things… I… I believe you need a distraction. Yes! A distraction, to calm this dire mood." I stepped away, wiping the tears from my eyes, realizing just how strange a thing I was doing. "It's been ages since we've had a proper family activity. Checkers, or perhaps charades. Shaun does so love that game. Is the lad… with you…?"

I looked at him, he wasn't comprehending what I was saying. "Codsworth, how long has it been since I last saw you?"

Codsworth blinked one of his robotic eyes. "Ahh, that must be the problem ma'am. It's been too long since you had a good meal, you're suffering from hunger-induced paranoia. Two hundred years of not eating properly will do that to you, I'm afraid." Two hundred years… it had been two hundred years since I went into that pod.

Mikhail put a voice to my thoughts, "Two hundred years, what? Are you…" He shook his head, struggling as much as I was to come to grips with the situation. The roaches had told me enough for me to make a scientific estimate, but there's a huge difference between making an intellectual abstraction and having concrete reality shoved in your face by a robot butler.

Codsworth was unfazed by our shock. "A bit over two hundred and ten actually, Sir. Give or take a little for the Earth's rotation and some dings to the ole chronometer." Okay, two hundred and ten years. And at one point in that time, a pair of individuals, possibly a whole team, infiltrated the vault, executed Nate, kidnapped my son, and exfiltrated without issue. That could have occurred at any point within that time, I shook my head in frustration, there went any hope of being able to rush down the road and catch the bastards as they made their escape. Not that there was any hope of that to begin with, but… In short, I needed to start coming up with a long term plan to find Shaun, or failing that, learn what happened to him.

Codsworth was still talking, but I'd stopped listening. The first thing I needed to do was find someone who knew what the hell was going on, if so many buildings survived, then people had to have survived as well. Where there were people, there was a balance of powers, there are agendas being pushed, factions pushing those agendas, and those factions were made up of followers. Sometime in the last two hundred and ten years, two followers of one of those factions had broken into Vault 111, killed Nathan Shields along with almost everyone else in cryostasis, and kidnapped my son to help push their agenda and tip the balance of power in their faction's favor.

Once I had the lay of the land, I needed to figure out which faction was behind the infiltration. That would need a whole plan of its own, but that was something I'd get to later. It would probably involve developing a network of assets, penetration of the various organizations, and establishing a cover for myself. After I'd learned who I was going to have to deal with, my first priority would be learning whether or not Shaun was still alive, after that would be rescuing him, and after that, whether Shaun was alive or not, I would strike them from the face of the Earth with the fury of God's own thunder.

"Focus," Mikhail said, "You must stay with us moj drug." That's when I realized he wasn't talking to me, he was talking to Codsworth.

Codsworth answered using his most distraught voice setting, "I'm afraid I don't know anything, sir. The bombs came, and all of you left in such a hurry. I thought for certain that Ma'am and Sir and Shaun and all of you were… dead." His eyestalks dipped as if he were hanging his head. "I did find this holotape. I believe Sir was going to present it to you. As a surprise. But then, well… everything happened."

Codsworth dispensed the holotape from one of his hidden compartments and gave it to me. It was no different from any other holotape, it's only distinguishing mark being a piece of tape with **'Hi Honey!'** written on it in Nates sloppy handwriting. "Thank you Codsworth," I tucked the holotape into the pocket of my suit. Vault-Tec may have been evil deceptive pricks, but they made a damn good suit.

Codsworth made a sniffling noise, "You're welcome." His tone changed back to the standard 'Stiff upper lip' Englishman, "Now. Enough feeling sorry for myself. Shall we search the neighborhood? The hubby and young Shaun may turn up yet."

I had severe doubts about that, but we needed to secure the neighborhood. "All right. Lead the way." Cleaning out the neighborhood was relatively easy, though it did bring some delightful revelations. As it turned out, the roaches weren't the only new creatures that had emerged from the nuclear apocalypse. Some type of fly, I'd guess a blowfly, had mutated to not only become huge, but had also gained the ability to shoot radioactive maggots with razor sharp spines. Let me repeat that, Radioactive. Maggots. That. Stab. You.

God, I hate FEV. At the very least they were easy to kill, one shot could do it. We let Codsworth handle the majority of the bugs with his buzzsaw so we could conserve ammunition. There weren't too many bugs in the neighborhood, thankfully. We only encountered them in two of the houses, Codsworth's flamer made short work of their nests. When we were done, Codsworth turned to us, his eyestalks hanging in despair, "I'm sorry ma'am, your family isn't here either. They're… they're really gone, aren't they?"

"It's alright Codsworth, I didn't think Shaun would be here, but don't worry, I'll find him." Or failing that, I would find his body.

Codsworth perked up, an idea apparently forming in his electronic brain. "What about Concord, ma'am? Plenty of people there. And last time I checked, they only pummeled me with sticks a few times before I had to run back home."

Exactly what I needed. If I could find people, I could gather intel. Once I had intelligence, I could start coming up with a plan. "There are still people alive in Concord?"

Cogsworth hovered up slightly then down again, his version of a nod. "Yes, although they're a bit rough. You remember the way?"

"Yes," Mikhail answered before I could speak. It wasn't hard to remember, especially considering, as far as my memory was concerned, I'd been there with Natalya for drinks only two days ago.

"I shall remain here and secure the home front." With that Codsworth turned and hovered off to do… things. I don't know how he's spent his time for the past two hundred years. Maybe I should have shown some more gratitude, he'd waited for me for over two centuries after all. But I could get to that later, now I needed human intelligence.

We debated whether or not to gather our equipment beforehand. On the one hand, I wanted to move fast, we needed to know the kind of world we were dealing with and I was pretty damn sure that the situation on the ground was fluid. Hell, I was pretty sure that the situation in the whole damn world was fluid. And if the situation was fluid, then the longer we took to get to concord, the more likely some roving band of post-apocalyptic warlord wannabes were to slaughter them for a can of Nuka Cola. Seem unlikely, cut out the 'post-apocalyptic' part and I've lost more than a few potential sources that way.

Mikhail wanted to gather all of our equipment before setting out. His argument was simple, he also thought the situation was fluid and we were likely walking out into a hostile rich environment. Taking that into consideration, he wanted to go armed for bear. More specifically, he wanted to go loaded for a Kodiak Arctic Assault Vehicle and an infantry platoon. That meant the heavy duty anti-armor and anti-personnel weaponry that he had stashed in his basement. As well as the special equipment in my basement. Yeah, needless to say, we epitomized the urban legend about dark secrets beneath suburban bliss, both metaphorically and literally.

We compromised in the end. Just our go bags, which had by some miracle, survived the nuclear fire and the intervening two centuries. Between the two of us, we were outfitted with tactical vests with ballistic inserts, a suppressed SMG, a standard issue spetznaz modular assault rifle, four frag grenades, two smoke signals, two sat phones, two first aid kits, and enough food and water to last us each seventy-two hours. That was along with the pistols, Pip-Boys, and everything else we were able to scavenge from the vault.

We were out of Sanctuary in roughly fifteen minutes. Strangely enough, we found a couple of frag grenades in the trash can on the way out. The bridge was mostly intact and the road was clear other than a pair of corpses lying just over the bridge, a man and a dog. Judging from the cuts on them both, that bore an eerie resemblance to those inflicted by a circular saw, Codsworth hadn't taken too kindly to attempts at looting.

We didn't talk much while we walked. We were both on-mission now, we had a set of objectives, we had the means to achieve those objectives. We were going to achieve those objectives.

We reached our first checkpoint when we reached the Red Rocket gas station, I'd been there just a week ago to get some parts to tinker with my Rocket. God this was weird, two centuries in less than a day. I had to stop thinking about that. I needed my head in the game.

"Contact, two o'clock." I turned, bounding toward us across the cracked asphalt was a German Shepherd. Not a giant German Shepherd, not a flying German Shepherd, not one with a ten-foot tongue that could be used as a whip, just a normal German Shepherd as far as I could tell. I cannot put into words how comforting it was to see a normal, non-mutated, animal.

I dropped to a knee and held out my hand for the dog to sniff. "Hey boy, what are you doing out here?" He nuzzled my hand and I ruffled the fur on his neck. He barked and looked up at me with a big friendly grin. I scratched behind his ears and his tail started wagging, "You have an owner boy?" The dog shook his head in a strangely human gesture. "So what are you doing out here?" He shoved his head against my stomach and then thrust his head toward Concord. "We're going there already; you want to come with us?" He nodded, barking affirmative.

"Madison," Mikhail spoke slowly, "You are having a conversation with a dog." The dog turned to Mikhail and growled. Mikhail looked him in the eyes, unfazed, "Be careful comrade, you are in the presence of wolves." The dog snorted, his hackles up. Mikhail laughed and stood up again, "I like him." The dog relaxed and let out a soft bark that sounded eerily similar to chuckling.

Then I asked the question that had been rattling around in the back of my mind. "You understand everything we say?" The dog nodded. Great, hyper intelligent dog, nature giveth, and nature puncheth you in the boob. "You don't talk right?" He shook his head. Well, there was that at least. With our new canine companion, we cleared the station and its perimeter, introducing us to another of the wasteland's creatures. giant naked mole rats. These creatures were seriously making me consider the possibility that this was all some crazy drug trip.

We found a number of items that could be of some use, but we left them for later. On the way to Concord, we encountered giant mosquitoes. At this point, I had given up on any hope for biological normalcy. But if I saw a giant mutant spider, I swear to god, I was going to nuke the world for a second time.

Reaching Concord, I was surprised to find so much of it intact. Most of the buildings were boarded up, but almost all of them were still standing. Noise led us to main street, just as I was about to round a corner, a laser flew in front of us, passing from my face. I dropped low and rolled behind a sandbag barrier while Mikhail darted across the street.

"Multiple hostile contacts!"

 **…**

 **Alright guys, second chapter, tell me what do you think so far? Good? Bad? Ugly?**

 **In any case, two things. The first, when is best for me to publish for you guys? Does it work better for you guys if I do it in the morning, at night? That's not a content issue and I've got a free schedule, so it's up to you guys.**

 **Second thing, at some point I will be moving the rating up to M. I haven't decided when yet, but it gives me more artistic freedom to write. That'll take me off the main page and you'll have to adjust your filters to see M stories.**

 **Oh yeah, and a big thank you to my first few favorites and followers for this story, big thanks to HayabusaDragonForce, . .dark, revanchist131, and VoodooValkyrie.**

 **Either way, R &R people **


	3. Chapter 3

They never stood a chance. It couldn't even be called a battle really, they were dead in less than a minute. Three untrained hostiles wearing bits of leather, armed with improvised weapons, against two veteran covert operatives with military grade weapons and armor, the element of surprise, and a German Shepherd, that's not a contest. Mikhail took the one furthest down the street with a single shot to the head. I flipped my SMG to three round burst and dispatched his colleague, ventilating his chest with a trio of fresh holes. The last one tried to charge us with a pool cue, only to be tackled by the dog, who promptly clamped his jaws around the woman's throat and tore it out with a bright red gush of blood.

Making our way up the street, we found the source of the laser that had come oh so close to leaving me without a nose. It was a man wearing an outfit that looked like something out of Revolutionary war reenactment. He called down to us, apparently there were more raiders, as he called them, inside and they were trying to get to him and some civilians he was holed up with. We entered the building, an old tourist attraction that I knew of but had never been to, and almost immediately took fire from above. There was a woman with another one of those pipe rifles on top of some kind of destroyed walkway, a second later she hit the ground with a thump and a fresh hole in her head.

We moved room by room, eliminating hostiles as they presented themselves. I hated the room with all the mannequins, I despise mannequins in a conflict zone. They're more common than you'd think, and they take a tenth of a second to register as noncombatants. That is more than enough time to get ambushed. There weren't that many of them, and they were by no means professional. We found a fusion core while we were clearing the basement, the encryption on the terminal was child's play, a few clicks of the keys and the door was open. Then it was a simple matter of walking in and yanking the FC out of the backup generator.

Something the raiders in the mural room said caught my attention. They didn't hear us approach, which was surprising considering the fact that Mikhail's rifle wasn't suppressed. "Man, why don't we just bolt? We got no reason to stick around and get shot."

There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, one of them had hit the other. "Stop being such a pansy. We stick to the plan and hold out for the others." Others, reinforcements, this situation was just getting better and better.

"What are you? Deaf? There's someone out there shooting the place up. I ain't sitting around waiting to die." He sounded scared. That was good, I can work with scared. We needed to find out more about these reinforcements, learn whether we were talking about five more guys with pipe rifles, or a modern day Mongol horde. I motioned to Mikhail, I take the one on the right, he got the one on the left, and to take him alive. We moved on a three count.

Three… two… one… we popped up at the same time. I squeezed the trigger and three rounds turned the raider's head into a fine red mist. His friend spun around, coming face to muzzle with Mikhail's rifle. His hand went for the pipe pistol dangling from his belt, Mikhail jabbed the barrel of his gun right between the man's eyes, "Don't even think about it suka." The raider's hand went still, "put your hands on your head, turn around, and get on your knees."

He did as he was told, "Hey man, no need t-"

"Quiet," I relieved him of his pistol and the other items he had hanging from his belt, Mikhail's rifle made sure he didn't try anything. I grabbed him one arm at a time and restrained him using some handcuffs I'd found in the vault. I knelt down and looked him in the eyes, "We have questions. You're going to answer them. You're going to answer promptly and truthfully. I'm personally against the use of torture," I pointed to Mikhail, who grinned like the wolf he was, "My friend here is not." The dog moved in, putting his snout right next to the man's ear. He bared his teeth, letting out a low growl, and exhaling hot breath on the man's face. "And apparently neither is my other friend."

The raider was in a good sweat now, between the gun poking the back of his head, the dog ready to rip his throat out, or me in front of him, cutting through him with my eyes. I have a piercing gaze, it's something I'm proud of. Ming used to say that my eyes went from emeralds to nuclear reactors when I was pissed, that if I stared at someone too long they'd melt from radiation. I took it as a compliment.

"First question, how many others are with you?" I kept count, including the ones outside, we had eliminated six and captured this one. Judging from the size of the building, I'd estimate a maximum of six and a minimum of two.

Mikhail dug the rifle into the raider's shoulder blades. "Nine, ergh… eight of us, we left three guys outside."

That left two to deal with, "How many reinforcements do you have coming?" I gestured for Mikhail to go handle the last two. I could handle this one.

The raider squealed as the dog decided to replace Mikhail's rifle with his own method of giving the raider incentive. He locked his jaws around the man's neck, one squeeze and the man was dead. I was really starting to like this dog. The raider did his best not to move while he looked up at me, "I don't know."

I turned towards the mural, it was nice. A portrait of the patriots fighting on land that would become my neighborhood, the USS Montana sailing off to war, Marines on Iwo Jima, the Tenth Orbital Combat Wing fighting in the Sea of Tranquility in 2073, and the First Armored Infantry Division in Anchorage in January of 2077. I was involved in the Battle of Anchorage and the Lunar Conflict, I conducted an operation that guaranteed our victory on the moon. We were so proud of that, we popped champagne on the flight back. Now I wasn't too sure that I hadn't inadvertently helped us along the way to nuclear Armageddon. "I'm not okay with that."

"Agghh," the dog squeezed a little tighter, "I don't know… shit, Gristle sent us ahead to keep 'em here. We're supposed to grab the old lady, Jared wants her, says she can see the future." I'd laugh it off as the deranged superstition of an uneducated savage, but then again, I was standing in the ruins of a museum in the town where I used to go to church while my hyper-intelligent German Shepherd and I interrogated a post-apocalyptic bandit. So my sense of skepticism was a little quiet at the moment.

"What's your name?" The question seemed to throw him for a moment.

"W…what?"

I turned back to him, "What is your name? I like to know who I'm dealing with."

"A...A…Asher," for the first time I thoroughly studied him, taking in his features. He was covered in dirt, thin as a rail, and he reminded me of someone. Getting a good look at him now, I noticed just how young he was. Christ, he was young, I started noticing the little details that I hadn't before. I noticed the little bit of baby fat somehow clinging to his cheeks. I noticed the few individual hairs jutting out of his chin, an obviously failing attempt to grow a beard. Shit, he was just a kid.

"Asher," I mused, "Hebrew for blessed. How old are you Asher?"

That stoked some defiance, he stared up at me with a touch of fire in his eyes. "Fifteen," there was even a little edge to his voice. It was actually a pretty impressive feat considering his present circumstances. The sound of two gunshots came from upstairs, Mikhail had handled the last two.

I dropped back to his level, "Let me tell you something Asher, your friends are dead. And though fifteen might make you old enough to fight and kill around here, back where I'm from, you should be busy with midterms, sneaking booze, and chasing cheerleaders. You're not even old enough to vote or drink."

I brushed a stray hair out of my eyes, "My point is, you're young, in my eyes you're a kid." I grimaced, "Unfortunately I can say I've killed younger. I don't want to kill you Asher, I'd like to help you, but if you want any chance to make this situation better for yourself, you're going to need to start answering my questions, starting with a rough approximation of how many people are coming."

I tilted my head to the side, indicating for the dog to let go, I'd struck a chord, I could tell. Asher's eyes went to the floor, "Just leave the old lady with me, take the rest of them and go. Gristle and his guys, they'll kill you, and they won't do it clean." There was desperation in his voice, and disgust, he wasn't okay with the way these guys operated. Fear, I could work with, ideological differences, with those I could play him like a well-tuned piano.

"Oh honey," I took hold of his chin and brought his eyes up to mine. "It's sweet of you to worry, but trust me," a predator's grin spread over my face, "This Gristle, him and everyone with him, they're going to die. I don't particularly enjoy killing people, neither does Mikhail, but we are very good at it."

Indecision flickered in his eyes, I met it with unflinching certainty in my own. Then he closed his eyes for a second and sighed in defeat. I had him. "There are like a hundred of us at the factory, Gristle has about twenty guys in his crew, he'll probably bring a couple extra 'cause Jared really wants the fortuneteller."

I let go of his chin, and stood up. "Good boy," I ruffled his hair. "Keep this up and we can turn this nasty situation into a good opportunity for you." I pointed to the dog, "My friend here is going to keep you company while I go and check on how things are going upstairs." As I was walking out, I paused and looked back at the kid, "Asher, I'm serious about wanting to help you. Believe it or not, I'm probably the only real friend you've had in a while."

I headed up the stairs to where Mikhail was talking with the man from the balcony. I eyed his weapon as I stepped over the two corpses of Asher's colleagues, it looked like some sort of improvised laser rifle. Crank powered, no need for microfusion cells, you had to admire the ingenuity. There was another man working on a terminal, a woman pacing across the room, a man curled up with his head in his hands, and an old woman sitting on the couch. She had to be the fortuneteller they were after.

"Madison," Mikhail turned to me, "this is Preston Garvey, the last surviving member of the Commonwealth Minutemen." He indicated the man in the colonial outfit.

"Minuteman," my eyebrow arched in curiosity. "So now we're going backwards in time." I shook my head, "it doesn't matter. The guy downstairs, I turned him. According to him, we've got about twenty to twenty-five incoming. We need to start prepping for when they get here."

Mikhail nodded, "Preston and I were just discussing that. He and Sturges here," he gestured to the man working on the computer, swearing every couple of minutes, "They have a plan, there's a minigun and a suit of power armor on the roof, all it needs is a fusion core to get it working."

A feline smile curled across my lips.

"I can work with that."

 **…**

 **Okay guys, I'm sorry I missed you last week, but I got swept up in my graduation. By the way, I officially have an associate's degree now. So, once again, sorry about missing the update last week, but I was busy. I'll try to keep things regular from now on.**

 **Oh and I wanted to thank LotusBlossomGenie, my first reviewer for this story. I love hearing from you guys, feedback is what I live for. Also LBG, don't worry, I never quit a story over low views or favorites, my usual reason is that I'll get writers block, or have a new idea pop into my head that just refuses to be ignored. I've only ever managed to finish one story so far, An Imperial Lily, and even that I might go back and add to. I'd encourage all of you to check it out.**

 **Either way, R &R people.**

 **Later.**


	4. Chapter 4

Okay, things were not going according to plan.

This was what I was thinking as this giant clawed _thing_ slammed me against a wall. If it weren't for the set of T-45 power armor I was wearing, my bones would be powder and my vitals would be filled with holes. Whatever the hell this thing was, it was tough. I'd put at least a hundred rounds in it, and I'd lost count of how many times Mikhail and Preston had managed to nail the thing, _in the head._ I could see the bullets lodged in its skin. This thing was _freaking bullet proof_.

Things had started out according to plan. We had the fusion core already, getting to the power armor was just a matter of running up a few flights of stairs. I took the power armor because I've had more experience and training with it. The raiders showed up, about twenty-five of them, just like Asher said. They fared no better than the first group, Gristle identified himself as the leader by screaming taunts. Naturally, Mikhail responded by putting a 9x39mm round through his eye. Once he was dead, the others fractured, it was standard bully psychology. I picked off the rest of them with concentrated bursts from the minigun.

Then the super spiky deadly spike monster of death crawled out of a sewer grate. Did I mention it was spiky, and deadly? _And FREAKING BULLETPROOF?_ It tore through the few raiders left, and then it decided to try and crack the giant metal cashew standing in the middle of the street shooting at it, A.K.A. me. And thus I found myself in my present situation, being manhandled around the street by the porcupine of death.

I batted it aside with an armored glove and rolled out of its grasp. I opened up on it with the minigun, but it didn't seem even slightly fazed. I've only ever seen two things ignore bullets, heavily armored vehicles, and powered infantry. I needed a new plan, and I needed it now. Brute force just wasn't going to work. Then a crazy idea popped into my head. It could work, but it was just as likely to get me killed. My go bag wasn't with me, it was back in the museum with the rest of my gear. But there was one thing I needed from it.

I sprinted across the street. "Grenade," I yelled up at Mikhail. After a second he tossed one down to me. By some miracle, I managed to catch it out of the air. Then I turned and did the stupidest possible thing I could do. I dropped the minigun sprinted towards the scaly embodiment of doom.

God, this was a terrible plan. If Ming were around, she'd throw me over her knee and spank me red with her hairbrush for even thinking of something so dangerous and stupid. So would Emma come to think of it. But they weren't here, and this thing needed to die.

I hurled myself at the beast, grabbing it by the arms and throwing all my weight, and more importantly the seven hundred pounds of steel that made up my power armor, at it. Even this hell-born demon couldn't stand up to that much weight so suddenly, we went to the ground with me on top. Then it did exactly what I'd hoped it would do, it roared in outrage. I punched it in the mouth, shoving my hand as far down it's throat as I could. It clamped its teeth my arm, the knives it called teeth dug deep into the metal. Alarms flashed on my HUD, telling me that the pressure was too much, the armor was failing. A few more seconds and I was going to lose that arm, I pulled the pin on the little surprise I had for it and let go. Then I pulled my arm back inside the armor, leaving the arm of the armor hollow, and ripped up on the emergency release.

I was flung out of the armor by what felt like a full-body punch. I landed with a roll a few away and leapt to cover just as the explosion painted the asphalt red and threw the power armor about a dozen yards down the street. My ears were ringing as I peeked up from behind my cover, there was nothing but a red mess where the thing's head and neck used to be. By some work of one devil or another, the majority of its body had remained intact. _What the hell were these things made out of?_

I made my way up the street, hoping the adrenaline high could keep me going long enough to get back inside and manage a decent debriefing, and if not, praising god I was small enough for Mikhail to carry with relative ease. I took a closer look at the power armor as I passed it, it was pretty badly dented, the headlamp was busted, and the armor on the right arm had been torn all to hell, but all in all, it was in pretty good shape considering what it had just been put through.

I stumbled back into the museum bruised and battered and bleeding a little bit, but alive. The others were all gathered in the central room, I ignored Preston's praise and the Asian woman's bitching and collapsed against one of the pillars. I could hear Mikhail and Preston talking about something, it sounded like they were talking about the next move. I'd relocate these civilians to Sanctuary Hills, more defensible, probably not too well known to the local raiders considering the state of the place, easier to set up a permanent residence. Since I had that thought, I knew it had occurred to Mikhail, and he would get Preston to go along with it. So that would be our next move.

The adrenaline high was gone and the crash was coming in full force now. Usually, I could regulate it, part of my training, but scaly monsters of death were a relatively new thing for me. I'd handled the hard part, Mikhail could handle the cleanup. Now… now all I wanted to do was rest. I tucked my head between my knees and… oblivion.

….

I was dreaming.

My wrists and ankles were bound, I was naked, and I was in the arms of the love of my life.

It wasn't Nathan, but then again, that was one title he could never claim.

Sunlight was streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the news was on the holoscreen. Operation: Huntress's Arrow had been a complete success, and the effects were on the screen. Emma was on the couch across from us, sketching in her notebook, occasionally looking up at us and grinning. My lover wasn't paying attention to the news, or Emma, and she was doing her best to make sure I wasn't either. She used one hand to gently probe my mouth with her fingers, sliding each one in and out, while every so often using the other to hit one spot after another that she knew would get me moaning. She used to say I was her instrument, and that when it came to playing me, she was a virtuoso.

She wasn't wrong.

"Hmm," I muttered, my eyes half closed, "You know we can't do this forever."

"Shh," she dipped two of her fingers in a glass of Nuka Cola and slid them into my mouth, the unspoken order to suck on them. "You look so much cuter with something in your mouth."

I closed my eyes, when I opened them again, the world had changed.

The sunlit penthouse was gone, replaced with a dark alley under a new moon. It was midnight, I was wearing my old black trench coat leaning against a dark brick wall. I pulled a cigarette out. She offered me a light. The old blue Corvega idled in front of us. I felt the comfortable weight of a pistol in my right pocket.

"Shouldn't be too long now." I took a puff of my cigarette, blowing the smoke into the night air.

She sat on the hood of the car and looked at her watch, "Better be, we've only got another hour before phase two."

I shrugged, "Always a slave to the schedule."

She stepped up to me, getting right up in my face, and grabbed my cigarette. She flicked it away and planted a kiss on me, mashing her lips against mine. She pulled away, "The schedule can get in line, you belong to me."

Then Liam and Nate came out the side door, a bound and hooded man squirming between them, and the moment was over. Emma was right behind them. The man went into the trunk and we all piled into the Corvega. I slid into the passenger seat as she started the car, she grinned at me and I grinned at her, then we all vanished into the night.

The scene changed again, the inside of the car shifted to a helicopter cockpit. My trench coat was replaced by black tactical gear. We were flying back from Operation: Wukong, we'd destroyed the Ao Kuang in its home port, the flagship of the Chinese East Sea Fleet. The U.S. was now guaranteed naval superiority for the invasion of Shanghai and Nanjing.

There were two helicopters, it was a joint Activity-Vympel. I was in the Activity helicopter, while the rest of my team was with Mikhail in the Vympel helicopter. An explosion sent the helicopter spinning, alarms blared, red lights flashed, commandos screamed from the bay, I gritted my teeth and held tight to the safety harness. From my position in the jump seat, I watched the pilots desperately trying to keep us in the air.

"Vampire, Vampire, this is Taipan, we are hit."

"Stabilizers are nonfunctional, controls aren't responding, we are going down, I repeat, we are going down."

"Taipan, this is Dragonfly, ETA to splashdown?"

I ignored them and hooked onto the overhead railing, then disconnected from the jumpseat. The pilots had their own way out. I made my way back into the bay, you could tell the novices from the veterans now. The new guys were panicking, rushing to tighten their harnesses and secure their gear. The veterans just sat there, calmly waiting for the impact like they were sitting in a dentist's waiting room. I clicked on the magnetics in my boots. The impact came a second later, we popped in our rebreathers and disconnected our harnesses. Two of the men hit the emergency bolts, blowing open the doors and flooding the compartment.

My magnetics switched off and I began swimming out of the hatch. We'd trained for this, done it a thousand times, or at least I had. I was just amazed we made it this far out to sea before getting shot down. I swam out the back end of the helicopter, the commandos following behind me. There was a slight sucking sound from the helicopter, the pilots submersible ejection seats, they got the easy way out.

Once I was clear of the helicopter I made for the surface, then I heard a gurgling scream and looked beneath me, one of the men was bleeding from a cut throat. A dozen men in sea-colored wetsuits just seemed to materialize in the water around us and my Pip-Boy's HUD lit up with like a Christmas tree. It was a Hai Gui unit, Sea Ghosts!

I pulled a combat knife from my forearm sheath just as one came after me. He thrust the blade at me, I brought my legs up and kicked him in the chest, propelling myself away. The commandoes were doing their best, but most of them didn't have any experience in underwater melee combat. There are two things you have to know about underwater combat. One, it's three dimensional, so be ready for a whole lot of new vectors of attack. The other is that it sucks, and you want to get out of it and onto the surface as soon as possible.

One of them managed to get behind me while another came at me from below. I flipped and caught the first one's knife arm between my legs, then I stabbed the one below me, piercing his suit and sliding the knife just under his collarbone. I pushed him down and twisted myself around, dragging the other one around so that he was beneath me, then I released his arm only to wrap my legs around his waist and bring my blade down at the intersection between his spinal cord and his brain stem, killing him instantly. I kicked him down and started for the surface.

The water around suddenly seemed to grip my arms, a Sea Ghost seemingly materialized in front of me. He must have crept up slowly so as not to break his cloak. I thrashed and kicked, but he held firm. I twisted my knife into a reverse grip and stabbed him in the hand, forcing him to release his grip on me. Bringing my legs back up in a reverse flip, I locked his head between my thighs, then squeezed and twisted until I felt the pop, he flailed around before his neck snapped. His blade coming uncomfortably close to my chest. I managed to avoid the blade, but I felt it cut into my respirator tubes. I immediately held my breath, I had about three, three and a half minutes max. Probably less because I didn't have time to prep.

I kept to my training, releasing and kicking off on the corpse. A cursory glance told me the unit was at half strength. These Ghosts were good. I hit the surface, ripped off my rebreather, and gulped in air. I could see the Vympel helicopter swinging in low and dropping ropes to the pilots. I waved at them and they hit me with an infrared spotlight. I felt one of the Ghosts grabbing me, trying to drag me down, I kicked at him, but he managed to get me back under. I drew in as much breath as I could before my head went under, saw the helicopter doors open and saw a black figure dive out into the surf. Back underwater, I faced my attacker.

He must have lost his blade, otherwise he wouldn't have tried to grab me, he would have stabbed me. He must have assumed I'd lost my weapon too, hubris, it'll get you killed in this business. I slashed at him, but he managed to block it and I only managed a cut on his forearm. He threw a punch, an amateur move for an underwater fight. I twisted the blade and managed an upward slash across his wrist, cutting into the veins there. He rushed to staunch the bleeding, and I took the opportunity to open his jugular.

More came after me, grabbing, and dragging me down. One managed to knock the knife out of my hand. I fought like a cornered animal, but I was at a disadvantage. None of them tried to strike back, they didn't have to. All they had to do was keep holding me under, because they could breathe, and I couldn't.

I kept fighting, my struggles were only making me drown quicker, but I had to do something. If I stopped I was still going to die, so I figured I might as well make it difficult for them. I could feel my lungs burning. My eyesight blurred, back spots began to appear, darkness began to creep across my vision. I was slipping out of consciousness. My thrashing stopped, my limbs went still, I couldn't move. The thought hit me, I was going to die.

Suddenly, the arms dragging me down went limp. In my fading vision, I saw one of the Sea Ghosts' heads jerk back, blood seeping out from his mask. I felt new arms wrapping around me, a new respirator was forced between my lips. I tried to suck in oxygen, but the command would not go from my brain to my lungs. I could feel myself being dragged to the surface, held by strong arms. As we hit the surface, the respirator was ripped from my mouth and warm lips pressed themselves on mine. Sweet life giving oxygen forced its way down my throat, my vision began to clear, I could feel my limbs again, and there she was.

"I've got you Madison, just hold on." I could see her face, the face of an angel.

"Breathe for me Tianxin, you're okay. I've got you" My angel, pulling me back from the abyss.

"I've got you Tianxin."

"I've always got you."

I blinked and the world faded. I wasn't floating in the Pacific anymore, I wasn't half-drowned anymore.

I wasn't in her arms anymore.

I was in a bed, staring up at a metal ceiling. I was back inside of the Vault. I sat up, I was in my underwear, the room was empty and a fresh Vault suit was laid out next to the bed. I pulled myself out of the, surprisingly comfortable, bed and got dressed. After I was dressed, Mikhail chose that time to walk in. And thank god, he had coffee.

"Feeling better Volchitse?" He handed me a two hundred year old cup, filled with two hundred year old coffee, and that coffee flowed over my two hundred year old lips.

Ah, that coffee was heavenly, "I'm fine, bring me up to speed on what happened while I was out."

Mikhail took a seat at one of the tables while I found a hairbrush and went to work on my hair. "We're back in Vault 111."

"I gathered that."

"We exfilled from Concord back to Sanctuary Hills. Sturges and Preston are working on connecting Sanctuary's power grid to the Vault reactor, checking to see if we can get a reservoir set up in the neighborhood and connect it to the Vault water purifier, seeing if we can't get basic services back online. I haven't broken open our stashes, but I've scheduled a meeting for tonight with Preston to get us all on the same page and start planning our next move."

"And how's Asher," I didn't want to hear that they put two to his skull as soon as I passed out. I still needed to pump him for information. And beyond that, the moment he started giving me information of his own free will, he stopped being a prisoner and became a defector, and that put him under my protection. I have only lost three defectors over my entire career, and I wasn't planning on losing another one.

"Your defector, I've got him locked in Jahani's root cellar. More for his own protection than anyone else's, ever since his little chat with you, he's been nothing but cooperative. I don't know how you break those people."

I shook my head, Spetsnaz training. They were old school interrogators, believed in cracking people with a hammer. Metaphorically, and in many cases literally, a lot of Activity people were like that. Thankfully, I'd had a sarcastic jackass of a mentor to teach me the new school techniques, that a little sympathy and kindness in a dark moment in someone's life went a whole lot further than a pair of pliers and some jumper cables. God, I missed that old Brit.

I set the hairbrush down, it was as good as it was going to get. "Good, I'll dig through my basement and get my gear together, then I'll debrief Asher and start planning for what we're going to do with the kid. Which is a touch ahead of the game considering we're still not sure what we're going to do with ourselves. That should keep me busy until the meeting with Preston. I'm going to assume that he was impressed and wants something from us. Probably to do with whoever these Minutemen he's aligned with are." I rubbed my eyes, god I was tired.

"Yes, we'll go over that at the meeting, but he's seriously a good guy. In the meantime, I'm going to get my own gear together and set up some security measures. We need a base of operations if we're going to go any further, and right now Sanctuary is the best candidate." Mikhail stood up and gave me a concerned look, "You sleep alright? Bad dreams?"

"Worse," I said.

"Good ones."

 **….**

 **Hey guys, two updates this week, one today, one tomorrow.**

 **This one, I'm not sure if it deserves the M rating. I don't really feel like it does in comparison to my other stories, but I'd like some input from you guys.**

 **This really ties back to my Shadows in the Tunnel story, I'm doing my best to try and make this story as accessible as possible to those who haven't read that story. How am I doing on that front?**

 **Either way, give me your opinions, on the rating, on the accessibility, on anything really.**

 **R &R people.**


	5. Chapter 5

I found the entrance exactly where it was supposed to be, hidden under a rose bush in the backyard, though the rosebush was now dust. I punched in the code and the hatch slid open. Nathan hadn't wanted this, he'd thought it was overkill. Now, I was happy to have tossed a couple of million into installing a hermetically sealed titanium bunker with an independent generator under the house. It was worth the hours of arguing with Nate over it. It hadn't taken five minutes to sell Mikhail and Natalya on the idea and have them get one of their own, but Nate and I had to go round and round on it.

I climbed down the ladder, every surface was covered in dusk. I hoped the bunker's seals had held. I fumbled around for a minute before I found the light switch. The lights flicked on with a buzz, I punched in another code and twisted the hatch wheel. There was a slight hiss as the seals released and I dragged the heavy door open. Once again, I had to fumble for the light switch, we were able to build nuclear reactors that could fit inside cars, but nobody ever thought to make a glow in the dark light switch.

I was pleasantly surprised when the lights came on, the seals had held and on first glance, everything looked fine. This made me glad that I was such a pack rat when it came to operational stuff. General Li's naginata leaned against the wall in one corner, Lord Albrecht's silver masquerade mask sat on top of a box of old tee shirts, the insignias of the Seven Shadows were stacked up next to a tub of Christmas ornaments, and of course, a jade dragon stolen from the Forbidden City. Those were just to name a few, we had a habit of taking trophies from ops, a gold-plated AK-47 taken from the corpse of the Emir of Ossetia hung from a peg next to one of my old rain coats, a bottle of wine from the Pope's personal reserve sat next to my old cap and gown from graduation, this room told the story of most of my career.

But I wasn't here to reminisce on the past, I started picking through the clutter. First, I had to hunt down clothes to change into, something that was less obvious than the bright blue and gold Vault suit. Thankfully, I was a clothes hoarder and kept anything I didn't wear in the basement, so it didn't take me long to find a decent tee shirt, some jeans, and a pair of old tennis shoes, not to mention new underwear. Once I was changed I moved on to getting my operations gear together.

I kept my gear in a locked reinforced steel chest. I didn't have the key, but that was alright, the lock was more of a red herring than anything else. The real way to unlock the chest was pressing a specific series of panels on the top and sides of it. The HN66 Sirius.12 Assault Suit was my armor of choice for heavy combat operations, but my nano gear was my go-to all-purpose suit. As for weapons, I had my nano sword, a silenced pistol, and a suppressed DKS-501 sniper rifle. I go into detail because I'm a bit of a nut about my gear, blame it on the fetishist in me. Of course the real arsenal was hidden in the lockers across the room where Nate had stowed his old gear.

His tastes were far more straightforward, assault rifles, combat shotguns, explosives, heavy combat armor, etc. I'd leave that for a rainy day, now I needed my tech. That was hidden in a box underneath some old photo albums. One of the old pictures caught my eye, it was on the cover of the book marked 'C.I.T.' The photo had been taken back when we'd first became a team, it was a group shot in the old café after hours, Me, Emma, Liam, Nate, Mikhail, and… Ming.

Ming… the love of my life, the person Nate always wanted to be. Two years of the best medical treatment money could buy, three Nobel Prize winning doctors and a medical staff better than the president's own, and nothing could get her out of that coma. I wondered how that last experimental treatment had gone, not that it mattered of course, she was probably vaporized hooked up to one machine or another. That made me think of something, I put the picture down and hunted down a large black leather bag.

Inside were a bunch of things that cannot be described in polite company. Ming's black bag of dirty tricks, all of our old toys, bedroom toys to be specific. At the bottom was a hand carved Juniper Heartwood box. Etched into the top was a naked woman who bore a close resemblance to me, with a Chinese dragon wrapping around her. Inside the box, on a lining of bright red silk, was a thin band of platinum with a locking clasp on the back and a leashing clip with a jade pendant hanging from it on the front. The pendant had a dragon carved into it, she loved her dragons, as the tattoo on my ass demonstrated. And on the bottom edge, along the side, was a series of small Chinese symbols etched into the platinum.

In English, they read as, 'The Property and Beloved of Mistress Xiu Ming.' Next to it on the silk was a small platinum key. This was a physical symbol of her love for me, it said all that anyone needed know about us. I belonged to her in every way that mattered, and she belonged to me. She was my lover, my friend, and my mistress. Of course no one outside of our inner circle had ever seen it, war with the Red Menace may have forced the US to move forward as a society, but wearing a collar like this out in public would have drawn some nasty judgements, and more importantly made some unflattering headlines.

Well, damn the judgements, and I doubted that there were any newspapers left, and if there were, they didn't matter anymore. I took the collar and slipped it around my neck, there was a soft click as the lock slid into place. I smiled at the familiar feeling of the cool metal against my skin, not choking or chafing, just tight enough so that you could never forget you were wearing it. It was my ownership collar, roughly the equivalent of an engagement ring. I shook my head, we'd never gotten around to an actual ceremony, I regretted that every day.

Enough reminiscing, I had business to attend to. I closed the box and put it back into the bag. Then I went back to retrieving my tech. I swapped the old Pip-Boy I pulled out of the vault for my old Activity-issue model. A sleek black little thing with a whole lot of special add-ons that you weren't going to find on a standard issue model. I immediately tried to activate the uplink to the ISA network, but it was unresponsive. Well, there went one continuity of government contingency. Well, not entirely unresponsive, the GEOINT network was functional on a basic level. It seemed that at least some of the satellite network was still online. Other than that, I had to pick up my portable terminal, these were incredibly uncommon even back before the war, an average one costing the equivalent of the annual income of a middle class family. The one I had was a custom model built by Robert House himself, it was worth the equivalent of the combined GDPs of several small countries.

Once I'd gathered everything up, I got my tactical rig and a rucksack to store everything. I'd stash what I didn't need in the house until I was ready to use it. Right now all I would need was my PT and my pistol. A thought occurred to me, and candy, candy would help, possibly with Nuka Cola. Yes, Nuka Cola from my private reserve. I had a few cases of it in the basement, perfect.

It was time to debrief my first defector in over two centuries.

 **…..**

 **This alludes to a whole lot of noodle incidents, if I ever get back to the Shadows in the Tunnel, I'll elaborate, if not, then I guess you guys can just fill in the details with your imaginations.**

 **By the way, I'm using a lot of mods, the nanosuit and HN66 being two good examples, I'm just using them as baseplates of course, stats have to be translated, origins converted, basically I have to make it my own. The reason I'm saying this is to make it clear that I am in no way taking credit for them, I am basing this on my playthrough to a certain extent, thus they shall be included, but all credit for the basic concepts of the modded content should go to the mod authors.**

 **I'm not going to list all of them, in part because I'm terrible at remembering that sort of thing, and in part because Bethesda has that stupid cap on the amount console players can download, so I have to keep shuffling whenever I find a new mod that looks intriguing. If you have questions about a specific part, drop a review or send me a PM and I'll tell you whether it's a mod or me, and if it is a mod, which one it is.**

 **Okay, long as hell author's note done.**

 **R &R people. **


	6. Chapter 6

The setting I chose was my house, I was going for a friendly and informal atmosphere. Codsworth had apparently spent the entire time we were in Concord and the time that I was unconscious preparing the house for my return. He'd swept out the leaves, killed all the roaches, dismantled and removed all of the debris, and essentially gave the house a top to bottom cleaning. He'd even set to work on repairing the roof and walls with scavenged supplies. He hadn't made much progress on the latter, even with his construction subroutines he was just one robot, but the house was clean and decently arranged. So there was that.

I had the scene set, two chairs around the kitchen table, my PT on the table, two Nuka colas in the fridge Codsworth had jury rigged to work again using some of the cryo tech in the vault, and some candy in my pocket. I'd swapped out my tee shirt for a light blue collared polo and put my hair up in a tight ponytail. Based on the limited read I'd gotten of him, I was going for the kid glove approach. I was aiming for an informal, almost homey feel. I was aiming for a certain vibe, more than platonic but not quite maternal. I was going for the cool big sister approach. Someone kind, understanding, approachable, but more than willing to call him out for being a dumbass.

The first thing I learned about interrogation was the same thing that my friend Emma told me for years, appearances matter. The CIA lost over a dozen defectors over the years for one reason, they treated them like crap. The CIA viewed defectors as traitors, they'd give them their blood money quite happily, but they didn't hide the disgust in their voices during the interviews, they didn't shake hands with the assets, they didn't look them in the eyes. All the money in the world can't win someone over if they feel like they're not getting what they deserve. The FBI knew this, they knew how to make suspects and informers and witnesses feel like they were on the same side as the agents, that yeah what they'd done might've been bad but it wasn't their fault. That's how you flip a person, you make them think that you understand them and sympathize with their problems. You make them think that they're on the same team, how you feel about them doesn't matter, what matters is what you can get from them.

The first time I saw this in action, I was in a black site in what used to be Israel. There was a top IRA assassin that they'd been trying to crack for months. They'd tried everything, torture, psychological domination, sleep deprivation and schedule manipulation, they'd brought out their whole tool box. I went there with a British intelligence officer named Desmond Lockheart, he wanted to use a new system of interrogation methods that he and a couple of Oxford Dons had come up with. The new system had proven fairly successful and was integrated into military training, but most of the actual field ops were slow on the uptick. It wasn't anything new really, it basically boiled down to being relatively nice and breaking them with manipulation and finesse instead of force.

But the first day I was there, Desmond immediately put a stop to the brute force methods and had them move the guy to a new room. Then he went in and started talking to the guy, not about the IRA or any of the intel we were after, but about random things. Soccer, jokes, the bars in Belfast, whatever came up, and eventually they got to talking about the guy's wife. Apparently he had a wife and a girlfriend, the girlfriend had expensive tastes. Desmond told him about how his wife was always spending money on the stupidest of things and how hard it was to work with that on a government salary. That was how the guy ended up with the IRA, he was former special ops, just like Desmond was, and those were his only marketable skills, so he started taking hits for the IRA to pay the bills. In one three-hour conversation, he'd gotten more out of the guy than six months of strong-arming.

The only thing was that Desmond didn't have a wife, he'd never served in any official capacity in the British military, and he wasn't hard up for cash, he was one of the top fifty wealthiest people on the planet. That's the lesson he taught me that day, it doesn't matter what the truth is, when you're handling an interrogation or a potential asset, you are whatever you need to be. Whether that's a henpecked husband sympathizing over an overspending woman, or an understanding big sister trying to help with a bad situation. It certainly helped that in this situation, I actually did sympathize with Asher.

I was sitting at the table when Codsworth brought Asher in. "Ma'am, I present to you the young Master Asher as requested." You had to love those English personalities programmed in, they make everything sound better.

Asher, for his part, seemed no worse for wear, he was still wearing those scraps of leather that seemed to be the unofficial uniforms for raiders. I'd have to see if we could dig up some new clothes for him. He was also still hand cuffed, I hoped they hadn't left him that way the entire time that he'd been locked up. "Wow," he said, a look of surprise on his face, "You're awake. I kind of thought you were dead when you passed out and that huge guy tossed you over his shoulder."

I chuckled, "Good to see you again too Asher. Want a soda?" I turned and went to the fridge, "And for god's sake Codsworth, get those cuffs off of him." I pulled the Nuka Colas out and set them on the table.

"Of course Ma'am," Codsworth did as he was bidden and I gestured towards the seat in front of me.

"It takes a lot more than whatever that thing was to kill me." I flipped open my PT, "The passing out was because of the cryo sleep. Quite honestly, you're not supposed to do anything strenuous for at least a week after coming out of cryo, most people can't even walk properly for two or three days. I came out yesterday and initiated a series of events that led me to fighting what seemed like a dinosaur. So yeah, I was pretty tired."

That knocked him off kilter, "What the hell is Cryo sleep?"

I smiled, this sort of thing was going to happen a lot. "It's an incredibly complicated process involving high level medical and chemical and biological science where your body processes are slowed to a standstill using methods of supercooling to ensure cryopreservation." Asher nodded along as I spoke, "You understood none of that, right?"

He shook his head, "Not a word."

Smart enough to admit he didn't know, "Good boy, brutal honesty, I don't understand the whole process either. The technology was just becoming practical for large scale use before the bombs dropped. The cliff notes version is that they shove you in a specially made metal box and freeze you, and that keeps you alive for a damn long time. About two hundred and ten years in my case."

That was what left him dumbstruck, "What…?"

I sat back and let the wheels in his head spin for a bit. In the meantime, I pulled the candy out of my pocket and popped a few Nuka-bursts. After a few minutes, the look of confusion turned into a look of awe. "There it is."

"You…" if his jaw dropped any more, it would have clattered to the floor, "You're prewar. You were alive back then, before the war bombs."

I took a sip of my Nuka Cola. "Two hundred and ten years ago, and one day now. I woke up in the bedroom down the hall, got dressed with my husband in that bathroom, had my morning coffee at this table, watched the news on that couch, and spent time with my son in his nursery." I gestured around the house as I spoke.

"We were planning on taking him to the park, getting ready for Halloween, and if I'm honest, I'd probably have skipped out for a half hour to check in at the office. None of that happened, because at about a quarter to ten in the morning, the sirens went off and the world ended." I might have been giving him more than I should, but it felt good to say this out loud. It helped make this seem less like some sort of insane dream.

He listened with rapt attention, "Nate grabbed our son and we made a mad dash for the vault. The Vault-Tec rep just got us registered less than ten minutes before it happened. We were in too much of a rush to question little things that we should have." I shook my head; I'd been such an idiot. "They said the pods were for decompression, there was no need for decompression at that level. And I've seen decompression pods, those didn't look anything like decompression pods. Then they froze us."

If I would have noticed it, said something, maybe… No, I couldn't think like that. That could wait for a dark night and a bottle of strong liquor. "And that brings us up to now."

He looked at me differently, curiosity sparkling in his eyes. Then he frowned, and I could see the wheels going once again. "No it doesn't."

I arched my eyebrow, "Excuse me?"

He didn't back down, "You mentioned that you were with your husband, Nate, and your son. You called the guy with you earlier Mikhail, none of the others were dressed like you. And I didn't see any kids at all. So there's a part of this that you're not telling me." He paused, "I'm sorry for your loss."

"Hmph," Of course, he notices that. I allowed a small amused grin to slip out. "Clever boy, don't let it go to your head though, we're all clever in this business." Odd choice of words, I realized after the fact, it was the same thing Mikhail told me when I was still a novice. "So tell me, which part of Maine are you from?"

His eyebrows shot up, he tried to cover it a little bit too late. "Why would you think I'm from Maine?" He was obviously trying to keep his tone nonchalant.

People really need to pay attention to natural reactions, you don't act nonchalant when someone asks you a random question, you act confused or mildly irritated. "You started to drop the R when you said war, you caught yourself but a stuck on that W just a second longer than normal. Maine is the nearest place with that particular manner of pronunciation."

He eyed me skeptically, "No way you could tell that from one word."

I leaned back in my chair, "Like I said, we're all clever in this business. Now, you were telling me which part of Maine that you are from. How does a fisherman's kid end up all the way down here?" He had scars on his hand that likely came from fishhooks and netting. And he was too young to have taught himself.

He ran his hand through his hair, "Lady, you're a psychic or something. I guess there's no point in hiding it. I'm from a little fishing village called Far Harbor, it's on an island up north. We just called it the Island, but some stuff I found when I was poking around pre-war ruins called it Mount Desert Island."

There was a name that I recognized, it had been a big tourist spot way back when. "How were things there? I'd have to imagine the place is relatively in one piece, it wouldn't be a priority other than a minor naval base. The Chinese didn't know we used it to maintain our boomers." I paused, realizing he wouldn't know what that meant, "Boomers were…"

"Submarines used to launch nukes." Hmm, him knowing that was interesting. "I used to poke around that base, there's a leak somewhere in the Vessel, gave me a nasty case of radiation poisoning." Radiation poisoning, from a vessel. The only vessel that would be there would be a nuclear sub, if that was leaking, then there was either a halfway functional nuclear reactor there, or SLBMs that hadn't been fired. In either case, they needed to be secured.

I blinked that thought away. I needed to stop thinking of myself as an operative for the United States government. "Impressive, poke around a lot of old world ruins?"

He tilted his head to one side, "A bit, I love learning what the world was like back…"

"Before we fucked it up." I smiled a little wider. The more at ease he was the better. "No need to mince words with me Asher. I mean, we always used to say that the generations before us were the ones that fucked things up, the wars in the Middle East, the overuse of fossil fuels, but mine really messed things up for you guys didn't we?"

He didn't respond. I didn't miss a beat, "So tell me, teens these days the same, blame it all on the elder generations?"

He took a long drink of his soda, stall tactic. This kid was locking up, he opened up on his home easy enough, it had to be his family that was the sore spot. Time to switch vectors. "Actually, let's leave getting to know each other better for later, let's get business out of the way. Tell me everything you know about the organization you worked with. Give me numbers, weak points, firepower. Tell me about the leadership, according to what you told me in Concord, one of the lieutenants is already dead, who's left?"

On that subject, he was decidedly more open, and for the next few minutes there were only the sounds of him speaking and the clicking of the keys as I typed. The leader of the group was the Jared person he'd mentioned in Concord, under him were his two lieutenants, Lonnie and Gristle. Gristle was dead, so that left Lonnie. She apparently didn't get along with Jared, we could use that. Apparently Jared got everyone to follow him by promising free chems, where he got them to start with, Asher didn't know. The guy was trying to figure out something he called 'the Sight.' Murphy, the old woman had mentioned something about that, I'd need to follow up with her on it. Lonnie thought it was a waste of time and effort. Division among the ranks, another good sign.

They were holed up in Lexington, half of which was held by the raiders while the other half was infested with feral ghouls, which was a colloquialism for people with an incredibly advanced form of radiation poisoning. I believed I knew what he was talking about, we'd heard a few strange reports of black sites in the Middle Eastern wastes getting attacked by what they'd described as the walking dead. I'd seen pictures of what looked like emaciated corpses, but the whole thing was covered up and transferred over to DARPA. After that I never heard another thing about it.

In any case, the raiders had set up shop there only recently, two or three weeks at most. They'd cleared out enough to set up outposts in the town, but the ghouls were giving them trouble. Their main stronghold was in the old Corvega assembly plant, solid concrete walls, a lot of high towers and walkways for sniping, not that many entrances, it was a very defensible location. Then there was the fact that there were anywhere between sixty and eighty hostiles to deal with. The direct approach was definitely out the window. However, there was a drainage tunnel that we could use for infiltration.

Then we moved on to other gangs in the area. Asher knew of only two that were close to Sanctuary, one was a small outfit occupying Walden Pond led by a man named Bear, the other a slightly larger organization that had established a base in USAF Satellite Station Olivia. I'd been there a few times, I hoped they hadn't destroyed all of the communication equipment and computers, they could come in handy.

Other than that, he only knew of the major players in the region. There were the Gunners, a mercenary group that weren't too far off from raiders, he didn't know any names or distinct locations, but apparently they liked to use overpasses as bases. There was another guy called Bosco who had his headquarters in an old school, Red Tourette who made her base in the old federal ration stockpile, Tower Tom who split from Red Tourette's group to make a base in Beantown Brewery, and there was apparently some new group of pyrophiles based out of an old ironworks. Ironworks could really come in handy in the long term if they were still functional.

That did it for what he knew about the local hostile groups. "So," I asked as I finished typing, "How did you become so knowledgeable about all this? I can't imagine there was a briefing on this in Jared's organization."

That actually got a smile out of him, "Yeah, that came right after orientation and before the welcome breakfast." I laughed, he shook his head, "No, some were people I met, some were people that Jared and the others talked about, and some I just heard about from rumors."

I added that to the file I was building, "so were you and Jared close?"

His chuckle was more bitter this time, "are you kidding? I just joined up a week and a half ago, I doubt the guy knows I exist. Only reason I even met the guy was because Lonnie liked to…" he trailed off, realizing he was saying more than he wanted to. "Was because Lonnie and I had an arrangement."

I leaned back in my chair, trying to keep my expression neutral. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and just burst out laughing. Asher looked at me as if I was insane, "What's so funny?"

I didn't stop laughing, that was the funniest thing I'd heard in two centuries. Asher grew irritable, "What's wrong with you?"

I regained my composure and took a drink of my soda. "I'm sorry. It's just comforting to know that even two hundred years later, even after the entire goddamn world's ended, teenagers still do dumbass things to get laid." I blinked, "This was about getting laid, right? Are you in love with her?"

Asher was taken aback, "Hell no! Look, I was having a drink at the Third Rail when this girl came up to me. She said she wanted to hook up, we did, she liked it, and she said that she was with a crew that was set up in Lexington. They had free chems, good pay, and she was a good lay, so when she made the offer to join up, I took it. Half a week later, I figured out just how crazy Jared is, he pumped a guy full of buckets worth of Psycho, then let him loose. The guy killed four of the guys in the gang, he tore them apart with his bare hands, and then the guy literally just exploded. Jared just sat back the entire time asking the guy what he was seeing." He held his head in his hands, his voice trembling as he recalled the massacre, "Then he just called it a failure and had us toss the bodies in the sewer for the ghouls. I mean who the hell does shit like that? It's just fucking insane!"

His voice grew in pitch and volume as he spoke, a wave of sympathy came over me as what few maternal instincts I had kicked in. This kid, and he was just a kid, the fear in his eyes made me more sure of that than ever, had been deeply disturbed, "And that wasn't the only time, he kept getting people to shove more and more drugs in them, to try and get them to have visions or some shit. We had at least two guys overdosing a day. None of them ever got anything, so what was the damn point." His breathing was picking up; he was close to actually sobbing.

I stood up and walked slowly around the table. "Slow down," I said, placing my hands on his shoulders. "Focus on your breathing, stay in the present." I gently tugged on his arm to get him to his feet and sat him down on the couch. "I'm going to count to ten, I want you to breathe at the pace I set," He did as he was told and after about fifteen minutes he was calmed down again.

"Sorry… I'm not usually… I mean I don't…" He kept his eyes on the floor.

I stood up and got him his soda, "Don't worry about it, you witnessed a horror, albeit one you unknowingly volunteered for, but still a horror. I've seen Navy SEALs, real badasses, have the same reaction." I sat down next to him, "I'm guessing that this isn't your first one."

"No, the first one was last year, I hadn't had one in months before last week." He sat hunched over, eyes on the floor. "God, I really fucked up this time, didn't I?"

I wrapped an arm around him, looking down at him sympathetically. "Yeah, you really did." I patted him on the back and stood up, "But what's past is past, now we focus on the next chapter of your life." I turned towards Codsworth, who was hovering by counter, attempting to wipe off centuries of dirt with a ragged washcloth. I turned back to the boy sitting on my couch, "Give me one second Asher."

I walked over to Codsworth. "Codsworth, I'm assuming that over the years you've had to discourage more than a few looters. Am I correct," I asked in a hushed tone.

To Codsworth's credit, he kept his electronic voice to a whisper. "I have my security protocols, so yes ma'am, I ensured the neighborhood was kept clear of undesirables. All of whom were properly warned, those who refused were dealt with and properly disposed of." His voice was grim, conveying the gravity of that statement. I had to give those designers credit, they programmed one hell of a personality matrix. Either that or he'd done a hell of a lot of evolving in the past two centuries.

I nodded, "Good, you've done a good job Codsworth. Now you're acquainted with our new neighbors, more specifically the Longs, correct?"

Codsworth nodded, "Yes ma'am, Mister Jun appears quite morose, while Miss Marcy was quite hostile to my attempts to assist them in settling in."

Sounded about right, "Codsworth, I'm quite sure that neither of those two are psychologically stable." I gestured to Asher, "That boy is under my protection, and more important than that, he can help me find Shaun. There's a chance that the Longs could try and carry out some kind of revenge on him for things a group he was affiliated with did." I looked Codsworth in the eyestalk, "My point is that the Longs are expendable, that boy isn't, so if they or anyone else try to hurt him…"

Codsworth nodded, "I will do whatever is necessary ma'am. Helping you with your agenda and finding young Shaun are the only things that matter to me."

"Thank you Codsworth," eccentricities aside, Codsworth was loyal to a fault, and in the end, that's what was important in this new world. I brought my tone back to normal, "Do me a favor, go and see if you can't find some of Nate's old clothes for Asher to wear, get him out of those rags. I've got a meeting to prepare for."

Codsworth went back to his cheeriest voice setting, "Come Master Asher, let's get you looking like a respectable gentleman, shall we? The clothes make the man after all. And accordingly I have predicted the need and arranged some options for you." He grabbed Asher by the arm and led him down the hall.

I snorted, of course he'd predicted it. Probably got them while I was interviewing Asher and not paying attention to him. He had to be the best butler in the Commonwealth, he was probably the only butler in the Commonwealth. I let my hair down and grabbed my coat.

I'd promised Asher a new chapter in his life.

First I had to figure out the next chapter of my own.

 **…**

 **Hey guys, only one chapter this week. I'll admit, I'm not sure about this one, it felt a bit forced.**

 **There was a lot of exposition, I know, but I had to include it for two reasons. One, at no point in the game are you actually informed about the various raider groups that you combat with the Minutemen, which would make strategic thinking difficult, this was my workaround for that. The other is to help with world building, in my opinion, the raiders of Fallout 4 need some flavor to them. They serve their purpose, but they aren't exactly original.**

 **I'm also going to be making them bigger, in case you haven't already noticed, I've increased the number of raiders for Corvega and Olivia, that's going to happen quite a bit. It is literally the only way I can come up with to make them any threat at all. Same goes for settlements, I'm just adding more people in general, I've always assumed the low numbers were more of a gameplay restriction than lore. It's been 200 years, even given a short lifespan and a high infant mortality rate, people are horny and condoms are damn hard to find in the wasteland.**

 **Also, in case you haven't noticed, I really hate Marcy, tell me if it starts seeming irrational. Not a huge fan of Preston either for that matter, like I said, tell me if it doesn't make sense for the narrative.**

 **Damn me and my long author's notes, I don't get to talk to people about this stuff much if you haven't noticed, so I blather on in my ANs.**

 **R &R people, later.**


	7. Chapter 7

I found Mikhail walking the perimeter with our newfound canine companion, whose name was, oddly enough, Dogmeat. I'd heard the old woman that Jared wanted so badly mention it. Certainly whoever had given him that name lacked the intelligence of their hound.

"So," I said falling into step with them, "what's your assessment?"

Mikhail looked out over the small river, "We can use the scrap from the collapsed houses to build a perimeter wall along the waterfront, we'll need to find more to completely wrap around the neighborhood. We'll still have to scout past the vault to see how much of a priority that will have to be. I'm debating whether or not to put people in the vault until we've got this place properly built up."

I kicked a can over the concrete ledge, "I'm not sure if we want to do that, some of these people aren't exactly stable, and shoving them in a bunker will make them more likely to freak out."

Mikhail nodded, "True, might be best to just keep everyone out here, let them move into the surviving houses. The Longs have taken up residence in the Russell house, Sturges has turned Rosa's old place into his workshop and Preston's bunking with him. Murphy is in the Whitfield's, and since everything other than my bunker has collapsed, I'm crashing at Jahani's. I've told them all that your place is off limits."

"Thank you," Dogmeat whined between us, I stopped, dropped to a knee, and scratched behind his ears, "Guess he forgot about you, huh? Don't worry, you can bunk with me Dogmeat." He barked appreciatively and glared at Mikhail.

The Russian held up his hands, "Comrade, I figured you could handle yourself."

Dogmeat barked skeptically, his tone making it clear he was calling bullshit. Amazing how quickly one can learn the social mannerisms of a hyper-intelligent German Shepherd.

I laughed, then in a quieter voice, "What's your read on these people?"

Mikhail eyed their old neighborhood, their new base of operations. "The Longs are definitely a risk factor, more specifically Marcy, Jun is more likely to harm himself than others. Murphy is either crazy or psychic, or both, and I'm not ruling any of those out considering our present circumstances, but she seems harmless. Preston and Sturges are both solid as far as I can tell, though Sturges might be pushing himself too hard, he hasn't slept since we arrived, and Preston has a look in his eye when he talks to me, he's either attracted to me, or has some kind of grand plans."

I smirked, "Could be both."

Mikhail shook his head, "Not again, if this turns out like Iceland, I'm blaming you."

Dogmeat eyed us both, I patted him on the back, "Story for another time boy."

"What did you get from your defector Volchitse?" He drew his rifle and aimed at a copse of trees across the creek.

"We've got three major opposition forces in the immediate AO, there's a small group of four of five at Walden Pond, a force of at least fifteen are holed up in the old Air Force sat station, and the group from Lexington that we met in Concord, subtracting the guys we took out in Concord, we're looking at about fifty to sixty hostiles."

Mikhail took his shot and one of those giant flies dropped on the opposite bank. "Walden Pond will be the easiest to deal with. The sat station will probably have some hardware we can salvage. And Lexington is the greatest threat, which do you want to handle first?"

The nagging thought in the back of my mind managed its way to the surface. I let out a sigh and sat down, dangling my legs over the ledge, "What are we doing Mikhail?"

Mikhail sat down next to me and Dogmeat laid his head on my hip, "What do you mean?"

A two headed deer strolled across the opposite bank. At this point, it didn't even phase me. "I mean, what's our long term goal here? I've got to find out what happened to Shaun, but say I manage that, what's next?"

For the two of us, long term planning was the norm. That was the whole premise of special operations, small actions that added up to large goals, which added up to one even larger goal. For most of our careers, those goals had been to influence regional events with the long term goal of promoting the general welfare of our respective nations. Now, the primary goal was gone, our respective nations were gone, so what was left?

What was all of this for?

Mikhail set his rifle to his side and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Short term, we get the essentials secured, food, water, shelter, electricity." He smacked the pack, dislodging a couple of the cancer sticks, and offered me one.

I took it, "Already had that thought out, but I asked what your idea is for long term?"

The two headed deer dipped its head into the irradiated water to drink. Mikhail took out a lighter out of his suit and lit his cigarette, taking a long puff of it. "Nation building."

I held out my own cigarette for him to light, he obliged. "You're kidding me."

He shook his head, "Madison, I don't have anything left, if nothing else, I'm a solider, I need a mission."

I took a puff myself, "A whole lot of building before we can call it a nation again."

"We've done it before, in Mexico, in Belarus, hell, we're probably the only ones left qualified for this sort of work." He blew out a cloud of smoke, "Have to go forward to go back."

The deer looked up at us curiously, or one of its heads did at least, the other was looking at something off towards the bridge. "I get what you mean." If we wanted our society back, we were going to have to drag it up kicking and screaming. And that was a goal I could get behind

Mikhail looked at his pipboy, he'd swapped the one he'd salvaged from the vault for his old Vympel issued one, really just an Activity issue in Vympel camo. He flicked his cigarette away, "Come on, Preston'll be expecting us." He grabbed his rifle and stood up.

I tossed my cigarette and stood to follow with Dogmeat in tow. The roads were still dirty and cracked, but the worst of the debris and detritus had been cleared away. Marcy Long was lighting a cooking fire under the Russel's carport, she sent me a glare as we passed.

Soon enough I'd have to find out what exactly her problem was. She seemed pissed at the world, but she also seemed to be honing in on me. Murphy had found a broom and was sweeping out her new house, I really didn't get why they called her mama, as far as I knew, none of them were related. The only one that was possibly related to her was Sturges. There was probably a story behind it, but I didn't feel like hunting it down yet.

Preston was waiting for us, he and Sturges were looking at a crudely drawn diagram on an old dining room table.

Sturges was explaining his plans to Preston, "If we dig right about here," He pointed to a spot on the diagram, "We should be able to splice the wires between the vault and the old power grid to the houses. That's where the vault's external power distributors run closest to the grid."

Preston nodded to us as we entered, but looked skeptical, "Are you sure we can do that? That we won't just end up blowing ourselves to hell."

Sturges shook his head, "Nah, they apocalypse-proofed these old things, they'll outlast all of us."

I laughed at that, I had to. Sturges and Preston looked at me oddly. "Sorry," I said, "It's just that that's exactly how they advertised these places." I gestured at our surroundings, "The communities of tomorrow, designed to survive anything, a home that will be waiting for you when you leave the Vault."

That must have come out more bitter than I meant it, because Mikhail was the only one who laughed, a sarcastic snort. Preston and Sturges just looked slightly uncomfortable. There was an awkward silence, until Sturges broke it. "But yeah, there's only one problem, the grid itself is fine, but some of the wires in the houses themselves have decayed and need to be replaced, we could just swap out the decayed wires with the salvageable stuff we can pull out of the collapsed houses, but it'd be safer and we'd have a lot more options if we could find a transformer to plug into the grid and run all the power through that." He marked a spot on the map and drew lines from it to all of the little squares that represented the houses. "If we strip powerlines, then we should be able to install a direct connection to each house and anything else we need to power."

Mikhail nodded, "I agree, but instead of putting the transformer at the connection point, why not connect it at a more central point, right here," he pointed to a spot that I recognized as the house adjacent to this one. "The house is collapsed, but we could still use its connection to the grid. It'll be easier to connect and more defensible."

"Yeah, good idea," Sturges rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "but where are we gonna get the transformer."

This one I knew, "Under the Red Rocket Truck Stop, just down the road."

Mikhail threw a questioning glance my way, "How do you know that?"

I shrugged, "I was bored one day, decided to people watch while they worked on Nate's Atomic. Saw one of the attendants try to sneak off to the cave down the hill, so I tailed him and found their little dumping scheme." I turned back to Sturges, "They have a ton of stuff down there; it's going to take a lot to move it though, also, the seals on their barrels have probably degraded by now, so it's probably pretty radioactive down there."

There was something in Sturges's smile that made me worry, "I'll pop some Rad-X before I go down there, as for the size, once we get it out of the cave, I've got an idea. I won't say anything yet, but if it works, it'll make things a whole lot easier." Sturges slipped his thumbs in his belt loops, looking pleased with himself.

Preston seemed content to ignore Sturges's troublingly unknown grand plan, so I decided not to question things yet. Preston moved on, "We've got the water situation covered, and we can get the beds out of the vault, so we've got shelter to sleep in. Sturges is handling the power situation, as you just heard. So our next priority has to be food."

Mikhail nodded in agreement, "How did the meeting with the Abernathys go?"

I got the feeling I had missed a meeting, "Someone catch me up on this one."

Preston took up the explanation, "The Abernathys have a farm close by, and more importantly a huge amount of food stored up. The caravaneers down in Quincy used to mention them, so I ran over there while you were asleep. They're sympathetic, but they want our help before they're willing to throw in with us."

Of course they did, "And what do our new friends want?"

"They want us to deal with the raiders harassing them."

Well at least that was in line with our goals. "Are they based at a pond, a sat station, or are they from Lexington?"

That caught him off guard, "Apparently they're at a satellite dish a ways to the east, how did you know?"

Mikhail answered for me, "Her little defector told her."

"Don't call him that."

Preston seemed to take that as a cue to open up the topic. "Speaking of him, we need to talk about what we're going to do with the prisoner."

This would be a fun topic, I kept my tone even. "He's not a prisoner."

"Well, he was a part of the group that killed a lot of our people, and some of our people want justice."

I'd expected this, "By some people, I'm assuming you mean the Longs."

Preston looked pensive, but nodded. "Marcy wants to hang him."

I leveled him with a nuclear glare, to his credit, he didn't flinch… much. "Marcy's not going to get what she wants. I understand that time has passed and things are different now, but we aren't going to execute a kid not even old enough to drive, especially when he's turned to our side."

The Minuteman was walking on eggshells, and he knew it. "How do we know he's not faking it?"

Mikhail chose this moment to put his two cents in. "Preston, I know Madison, if she says he's turned, he's turned." He adjusted the strap of his weapon, reminding everyone he was the only one in the room who was armed. "And I happen to agree with her outlook, if he had caught a bullet in the fight, that would be one thing. But killing a boy now, just to satisfy a call for blood, isn't justice, it's murder."

Preston seemed to consider this, and agreed, "You're right, we need to be better than that. But still, what are we going to do with him?"

"Leave that to Mikhail and I." I eyed Mikhail, we'd talk about it later. "Now we work out our situation."

I detached the projector piece and tossed it in the air. The antigrav systems kicked in and the eye opened up, staring down at the table. A few taps on my pipboy and a 3D projection of the Commonwealth was projected from the floating device. It wasn't entirely accurate, the satellite filled in details it couldn't see with archived data, so some of the buildings that had likely been destroyed were shown as entirely whole.

With a few manipulations of the touchscreen on my pipboy, I focused the map on the northwest portion. "We're here," I marked Sanctuary Hills on the map, dropping the hills for simplicity's sake, covering it in green. "We have confirmed hostiles here, here, and here." I marked the pond, the sat station, and the factory on the map, covering each in red. "We have unconfirmed hostiles in these locations." The major raider group strongholds that Asher had mentioned were highlighted in yellow.

Preston pointed to a spot on the map, a high voltage tower close to sanctuary. "That's where the Abernathy farm is." He pointed to another spot, a small structure nestled near the edge of a cliff. "That's Tenpines Bluff, Molly and Rick have a small farm there, I used to bump into them at Bunker Hill." I marked both in green and zoomed the map out, back to the Commonwealth as a whole. I knew where Bunker Hill was, though I was assuming he meant the memorial on Breed's Hill.

"What's at Bunker Hill?" I zoomed in on that, revealing a number of small structures spread out around the monolith.

"It's the main place to trade in the Commonwealth, all the caravans base themselves out of there. Most of the small farmers take their stuff there to trade to. A whole lot of caps run through that place."

I labelled it in green, "Caps, as in bottle caps?"

"Yeah," Preston looked at me like I was stupid for a second, before remembering who he was talking to. "They're, I guess they're kind of like the dollars you guys used to use."

Bottle caps as currency, another oddity for the list. Still, money was money, and where there was money, there was intel. I filed that knowledge away for later, it could help find Shaun. "Anywhere else we should be familiar with?"

Preston pointed to Fenway park, and I zoomed in on it. Apparently, it too had been repurposed, judging by how densely packed the former field was. It even contained a reservoir. "That's Diamond City, biggest city in the Commonwealth." I followed the routine and marked it as green.

That added to the list of places I needed to investigate. Still, I kept quiet as Preston indicated another area, a walled off section of the financial district. "That's Goodneighbor, basically, if you can't make it in Diamond City, on the caravans, or settling in the outskirts, you end up there or with the raiders."

That, I was familiar with, Mikhail picked up on the same idea. "So it's a slum, a ghetto, a place where people go to be on the fringes of society, but not quite outside of it. A place to get disreputable things."

"Yeah," there was contempt in Preston's voice. That didn't surprise me, Preston seemed like the boy scout type. The 'If you aren't contributing to the cause, you're part of the problem' type. My guess, he wouldn't spend five minutes in a place like Goodneighbor if he wasn't ordered to. Asher had mentioned spending time there; I'd have to ask him later.

Still, places like that attracted a certain breed of people, whores, thieves, drug dealers, and thugs. The kind of people who would kidnap an infant from his father's arms and blow the man's brains out for resisting. Another place on my list of places to start hunting. "Okay, is there anywhere else we need to be aware of."

Preston shook his head, "None right now, there are a few settlements down south that I know about, but those are too far away to get in touch with right now."

Alright, between Asher and Preston, I felt like I had a fair approximation of what we were dealing with. "Okay, I know I'm not in charge, but here's my recommendation for our agenda going forward." I moved the map back to the northwest overview. "According to my asset, Walden Pond is the residence of five or so raiders led by a man under the name Bear. They're the smallest threat, but also the easiest to eliminate. I can gear up, head out tonight, liquidate them, and be back before dawn."

Mikhail nodded, "I agree, kill the rats in their hole before they come to bite us."

Preston eyed me warily, "Are you sure you can handle those raiders on your own?"

A smug smile slipped across my face, "Honey, Mikhail and I took out twice that many before I got my hands on that T-45. These guys don't stand a chance." It was arrogant, but some bravado was required. Sometimes you had to push it through a person's head that, yes, you were a professional.

Mikhail ignored Preston's doubt and my rebuttal, "I'll run recon on the sat station, see how fortified the place is."

"Preston, we're going to need support before we move on Lexington. Tenpines Bluff wouldn't be a bad place to start." It wasn't exactly high priority, but getting it out of the way now wasn't a terrible idea.

"Agreed." Good, I wasn't in the mood to argue.

Sturges decided to remind us all he was in the room. "Guess that means I'm holding down the home front."

Our roles established, it was time to get back to work.

And thank god for that.

 **…**

 **Hey guys, good news, bad news time. Good news, I'm one class away from earning my associate's, then its off to U of I for bachelor's. Bad news, that class is an ungodly horrible math class that I'm terrible at, hence its eating up a bunch of my time, so updates might get a bit spotty in the future.**

 **If anyone's good at Hamiltonian ciruits and nearest-neighbor algorithms, drop me a line, I could use the help.**

 **Either way, once again, very expositiony, but that's the only real way that I can introduce Madison to the CW. Next chapter, we get back to the action, and a bit of a treat for any longtime fallout fans, the grand return of one of my favorite characters. Can anyone guess who it will be?**

 **R &R people. **


	8. Chapter 8

The Nanosuit was developed by ISA Research and Development in conjunction with Robco and Cambridge Laboratories, using research procured from the Big Mountain Research and Development Center. Only one was ever made and it was continually upgraded to its current, sixth, generation. It was made up of a shifting nano weave controlled by a neural connection synced to an extensive cybernetic system. It's powered by a series of microfusion breeders, which support all of its six combat modes, its multispectrum goggles, respirator, and of course, the jetpack.

The jetpack may have been added at my insistence… it had a lot of practical applications.

I do not need to justify demanding a jetpack from the lab, jetpacks are awesome, anyone who disagrees has clearly never had a jetpack, or been a kid.

All kidding aside, the jetpack was useful. As was the sword, a simplified version of the shifting nano weave that allowed the suit to shift combat modes also allowed the sword to shift from a tanto, a blade slightly longer than the average combat knife, to wakizashi, a foot long curved sword, to a full two foot long reinforced katana, each form carefully engineered by traumatologists, engineers, and expert bladesmen to be the most effective tool possible.

These tools had been designed with a single person in mind, me. I was the only person who could use these in truth, all of it was designed to work in conjunction with my implants, both working in conjunction to operate at maximum efficiency. From what I understood, the model of my implant system was eventually simplified and standardized to provide the basic pipboy implant array.

Still, there's a difference between Da Vinci's original Mona Lisa and the thousands of reproductions since.

Were there any reproductions left? What happened to all of the art in the world? I knew a few Van Goghs survived, I had them in my bunker. Most of the Louvre's paintings had been in the basement of the Lucky 38, saved from the flames of a burning Louvre during the Decimation of Paris by my father's security forces. Had Vegas survived? I knew that had become Robert House's obsession for the twelve years I had been in the Activity, leaving my father to handle the majority of RobCo's business.

Why was I thinking of all of this, of technology, and art, and history?

Because, as it turns out, the nuclear hellscape created by end of humanity is _boring_.

I mean, I don't know what I was expecting. The trip to Concord had held my focus easily, I had been in an unfamiliar environment, fresh off of the grief of Nate's death and Shaun's abduction, desperate to do something to get a grip on the situation.

Now, working my way through the dead forest between Walden Pond and Sanctuary Hills, I couldn't help but let my mind wander. There was of course the initial shock of the ravaged lands that were a lush and verdant forest what felt like a mere two days ago. That lasted about five minutes, then came an appreciation for the kind of starkly beautiful desolation that now surrounded me, that didn't last long either.

Now, it was just… brown

Everything was just a dull brown or grey or tan, and that was in the waning light of dusk, now it was all washed out by the coat of green through my mask. Granted, the bare trees and lack of plant life played in my favor, with my goggles, I had a clear view of my surroundings on all sides.

Another thing that I had noticed before turning on my night vision, was just how dark it was. Without the ambient light from Boston proper, from Concord, from all the little lights that had allowed the general population of the prewar world to operate at night. Once again, this played in my favor, nvgs were hard to come by in the old days, almost solely used by the military due to the costs being too high for most police departments, much less next generation tech like mine. This meant that I was likely the only person able to see in the dark, meaning that I would see someone long before they saw me.

And anyone who'd ever carried out a night operation would tell you, if they can see you, and you can't see them, you're dead, and vice versa.

The only bit of excitement came when I passed a cabin, there were about six red heat signatures standing out against the green, as my thermal combined with my night vision. They were hunched over, dressed in rags, with warped features from what appeared to be a full body burn scar. They stumbled around, occasionally tilting their heads back and sniffing the air like animals. I had to assume these were the ghouls that I'd been told about.

One looked right at me, and my hand fell to my sword. I had no idea if it could see me, staying absolutely still, I waited.

The seconds ticked by as the thing just stood there, staring at me.

Then it turned and started back towards the cabin, and I slowly put some distance between myself and the tiny pack. They seemed animalistic, feral even, but Asher had said that they had once been human.

That could be a dangerous combination, I'd have to remember this place as a possible security risk.

I slinked through the dead woods, Walden Pond couldn't be much further, I was sure of it. And I was proven right when I finally came to the edge of the dead woods.

The pond was far shallower than I remembered it. Old tires and barrels, a busted refrigerator or two, once hidden at the bottom, were now plain for all to see. Amazingly, the replica of old Thoreau's tiny cabin still stood next to a ruined gift shop. I'd never been one for transcendentalism, one couldn't be in my line of work, but even I'd read the book that bore this tiny pond's name.

Philosophy aside, my current focus was on the flash of red against the green. A large cloaked figure moved slowly, not like someone who was wounded, or tired, or even lackadaisical. He, it, whatever, walked like a predator, low posture, hood shifting as his head swiveled from one side to another. Each movement was deliberate, calculated, not a single bit of energy wasted.

This wasn't one of the raiders, or if it was, these raiders weren't like the morons in Concord. Well, if he was a predator, he wasn't the only one at the pond that night.

I moved forward, just as slowly and carefully as my cloaked counterpart. The skin of my suit shifted subtly as I moved, patterning and repatterning itself to match my surroundings, the nanites in my suit spread through my implants, streamlining my nervous system to make my movements more fluid and graceful.

Working my way around the pond, I never let the cloaked figure out of my sight. There were no signs of anyone else in the area, but I knew that the gift shop had a basement, and the drainage pipe in the lake was large enough for a person if they were crouching. When I was halfway around the lake, there was a small splash in the water. Instinctively, my eyes flicked to the source of the sound, it couldn't have been for more than a fraction of a second, but when I looked back, the cloaked figure had disappeared.

A second later, I felt the point of a long knife on the back of my neck. "I have no particular desire to kill you, but there are two possibilities either you are with the raiders I seek, or you seek them as well. In either case, you are of use to me."

The voice was rough, like his vocal cords were coated in jagged rocks. I raised my hands, as a sign of cooperation and to position myself to disarm him. "I'm here to kill them," considering he thought I might be one of them, and the fact that he had a knife in my back, it seemed he wasn't a fan of these raiders. Thus, the truth was probably the best policy here.

The knife dropped away, "Good, these raiders need to die."

I slowly turned around to face him, and realized just how large he was. He had to be eight or nine feet tall, it was impossible to tell his build through the voluminous cloak, but he had strangely long arms and appeared to be doubled over like a hunchback. The hood cocked to the side as he retreated. "Apologies, but I must locate these raiders quickly."

Nonchalantly I asked, "What's the rush?" A timeframe can tell you a lot about a person, especially their goals. Though I was fairly certain that I wasn't speaking to a human.

He regarded me with what could have been curiosity, his face too well hidden by the cloak to tell. "There was a small homestead a few miles from here, these men burned the house to the ground, executed the father, and kidnapped the mother and her two children. I must find them before they are killed."

Oddly noble, possibly a lie. Still, whatever his reasoning, it seemed that our interests were aligned. "Well, it seems we're both here to deal with a threat to the locals. Shall we get back to work?"

The hood shifted up and down, nodding. "Time is of the essence, and battle is close at hand. I apologize if my appearance unnerves you, but we lack the time for proper introductions. Do not attack me."

Before I could question this, he ripped his cloak away with a showman's flourish. I took a step back, the reasoning part of my brain fought muscle memory and animal instinct to stop my hand from drawing my blade.

Standing before me was the same bulletproof spike monster of death I'd faced in Concord. There were slight variations, this one was more grey, the horns were shorter and went upwards rather than down, the face was more elongated, the claws were longer, and the toe claws were more even. My mind broke him down to details, to be able to process the whole terrifying picture. It was only training and experience that whittled the time down to a matter of seconds, a normal person probably would have stood there, riding that fine line between terror and confusion, for at least an hour.

I shook myself out of it, "Alright, my name's Madison by the way."

The beast looked at me, his reptilian eyes held interest and… admiration. "Goris, now, I have followed them here, but their scent is muddled here, obscured and intermingled with refuse and filth."

Well, at the very least, that confirmed they were here. "Let me have a look around."

The beast, Goris, was an apex predator, that much was clear. But nature's boon was also a weakness, humans had advanced because they had to. Nature, in its new and twisted form, had given Goris's kind long claws and teeth that could tear through power armor, skin that could stop bullets, and apparently a highly developed sense of smell. These were amazing abilities, but they made him reliant on them. He could probably follow the faintest scent for miles but, that reliance, that trust in his natural abilities made him miss some of the traces of humanity. Such as the small traps hidden in the gift shop, easily disarmed.

Or the note that gave the exact location to the entrance of the raider's hideout, pinned to the wall next to the basement door.

I blinked twice as I stared at the note, amazed at the level of sheer stupidity these idiots demonstrated.

Still, a plan formed in my mind, a simple pincer movement. I pulled my lock picks from a compartment on my belt, it was surprisingly sturdy for something as mundane as a gift shop. It took me a few minutes, but the lock yielded to my training. I tested it as carefully and quietly as possible, the handle gave, and no drug addicted lunatic stormed out to die at my hands, good.

I slipped back out of the gift shop to find Goris with his head tilted upwards, sniffing the air and searching for a scent. For the first time, I noticed the pack strapped to his back, where his cloak had to have vanished to. One had to marvel at the level of delicacy and control he had to have, not to tear everything he touched to shreds with those massive claws of his.

He affixed me with those reptilian eyes of his, he slowly ran each of his claws over his tail, for a second I thought he was stroking it, a nervous habit of some sort, then I realized, he was sharpening his weapons. He did not speak, merely waited for my results.

"They're in the basement," I drew my blade, leaving it in tanto form. "There is a door in the shop and another entrance through the sewer."

His head bobbed, seeing what I was getting at. "I will not fit through the sewer, I will go through the shop."

We were on the same page, good. I took the earpiece nodule form my pipboy and held it up for him. He must have recognized what it was, because he took it daintily in his claws and put it in what I assumed was his ear. "When I give the signal, we storm in at the same time. We don't give them enough time to kill their hostages."

"Agreed, good luck." With that, he turned and stalked towards the gift shop. I stared after him, I was about to conduct a hostage rescue operation with a large mutant killing machine in the basement of the Walden Pond gift shop.

My life has become infinitely stranger since coming out of cryo, and it had only been two days.

Still, I moved along the edge of the lake until I was close as possible to the drainage pipe. I did this mainly because I didn't want to get too wet, but the second my feet touched the water, I had a practical reason. The Geiger counter on my pipboy started clicking and the gauge on my HUD went deep into the red.

Well, guess I wouldn't be doing too much swimming anymore, I took hold of bars of the grate, either time or the raiders had worn down the edges, allowing it to slide in and out easily. I set it to the side and slithered inside.

A few feet in, there was a fork, down the right-hand tunnel, a section of the pipe had been cut out, and the light of a fire slipped in. The voices of the raiders carried in the small space. "So this guy made sure he had everything he needed before he started his camping trip in that little shack up top. Double checked his list and everything. That's why they call it 'being Thoreau.'"

Actually it comes from an Old English word meaning from end to end, but I doubted that these idiots wanted an etymology lesson. Another voice, "Oh… and this guy invented trance…transyl."

"Trainsdentalism, moron. You sound like an idiot." The first voice again, if these two were the ones running the show, the note and the fact that the pipe was unguarded made a whole lot more sense.

I peered around the edge of the pipe, my night vision adjusting to the light, there were only two of them in the tiny cavern. They stood by the fire while two bound and hooded figures sat shivering in a small stream of filthy water. My suit was insulated, but according to the thermometer on my pipboy, the water was cold, and more worryingly, still mildly irradiated. It wasn't as bad as the stuff outside, but prolonged exposure could be problematic.

I whispered into the microphone in my mask, "Go."

I surged out of the pipe, my mask and suit turning me into a black, many eyed, nightmare melting out of the shadows. The first idiot, the one closest to the captives, didn't even manage to turn around before I was on him, sliding my tanto, hilt deep, under his collar bone and into his subclavian artery before ripping it out and shoving him to the side.

The second one screamed, his intermingling with others coming from the cavern leading to the basement. It sounded as if a tornado had been unleashed in the other room, one with teeth, and long sharp claws. He leapt for his gun, a pipe pistol lying next to a bedroll a few feet away, his eyes wide with terror. My foot shot out, tripping him, he landed on his stomach. I followed him down, slamming my blade into the back of his neck, neatly severing his spine from his brainstem.

His death was instantaneous; his comrade wasn't so lucky. Bright red, arterial, blood sprayed from the wound, the raider blubbered as he desperately tried to stop the flow. I left the dead raider and knelt before the bleeder. His eyes were screwed shut and he was calling out to his mother, to god, to anyone to save him from the monster in front of him.

I'd like to say that I took no joy in his terror, in his pain, but that would be a lie. He had kidnapped children, taken a husband from his wife, destroyed a home, broken a family. He didn't even have the excuse of youth like Asher, he looked to be in his mid-thirties, older than me. I reached out, pulling his eyelids open with my gloved fingertips, making him stare at my masks inhuman visage as life flowed out of him.

Making him know the fear that he inflicted.

And an idea occurred to me.

Then I pulled a stimpack from another compartment on my belt and slammed it into him. The bleeding slowed and stopped, an extremely complicated process, that required an MD, PhD in microbiology, and another PhD in pharmaceutical sciences to properly understand, occurred, and the raider stabilized.

I pressed a small button hidden on the side of my mask, activating my voice synthesizer. It was one of my favorite little gadgets because it made my voice sound like some kind of computerized demon.

His breathing steadied, the sudden lack of pain probably felt euphoric, so much so that he probably forgot where he was.

My blade against his throat and the glowing eyes of my goggles quickly reminded him where he was. He opened his mouth to speak, but I clamped my free hand over it, covering his nose as well, cutting off his oxygen. "You will not speak."

I pressed my blade harder against his windpipe, a tiny bit of blood seeped out of the shallow cut. He kept very, very still. His terror and his sense of self-preservation paralyzed him. "All of your friends are dead."

My voice was like electronic death, a futuristic reaper come to collect their evil souls. "You live only as my messenger. You will go to Lexington, to the Corvega plant. You will bear my message to them, to Jared."

He started twitching, it was involuntary, a desperate body's attempt to get life-giving oxygen again. I released his face, he attempted to take a deep gulp of air, but his swelling neck was met with the painful reminder of my blade. He tried to swallow, his mouth clearly dry. "Wha…What's your message?"

The horror in his gaze, the desperation in his voice, the disgusting scent of him literally pissing himself with fear. I hate to admit it, but I love this part of my job, bringing overgrown bullies to heel, reminding them that there are monsters far worse than them lurking in the dark.

"Tell them that the Reaper is coming for them, tell Jared that I'm coming," I almost said, for his sould, an oldie but a goodie, but then I remembered something Asher had said. "Tell Jared that I'm coming to take his sight."

I stepped back, he stood up tentatively, still expecting me to kill him. The second his back was to me, I kicked him in the small of his back, sending him down on all fours. "Go," I yelled, stretching the o for effect. He scuttled down the pipe and it was only when I heard the grate knocked free by the fleeing fool that I turned to the captives. For the first time, I noticed the size of them, too small to be the mother, the children, had to be. I removed my goggles and mask, didn't want to scare them.

As I slipped the goggles off, I caught Goris in my peripheral vision, standing in the side tunnel. It occurred to me that he'd been watching the whole time I'd been doing my Reaper routine. Behind him stood a half-naked woman, clothing torn and eyes streaked with tears, she cowered behind Goris's massive form.

His reptilian eyes shine in the firelight.

"Interesting."

 **….**

 **And we're doing another two this week. The surprise for those long time fallout fans such as myself is of course, Goris. For those of you don't know, he was a companion in the first game. I have loved the idea of a talking deathclaw companion since I first heard of Goris and it is a crime that Bethesda has refused to provide us with another one.**

 **You might have noticed in Ch. 4 that I've upped the threat presented by deathclaws. That's because I don't really feel like the deathclaws in game truly represent the deadliness of the creatures in the lore. These monsters should represent the pinnacle of pre-war genetic engineering and post-war evolution, they should be nigh-impossible to defeat with conventional weaponry. Successfully fighting one should require cunning and creativity or overwhelming firepower, preferably a mixture of both.**

 **Because of that, I'm going to keep encounters with them on the rare side, other than Goris of course**

 **BTW, I'm thinking of putting out a couple of side stories, one is a kind of faux-official list of government and military contingencies prepared before the war just in case, stuff that I may or may not bring up in this story. The other is a kind of journal style of my protagonist's great great grandfather going through WW2 as an SOE operative and exploring the points of divergence between our history and Fallout's. Would you guys have any interest in those ideas?**

 **Another long AN, need to stop putting you guys through these.**

 **Either way R &R people.**


	9. Chapter 9

A warm shower after a successful operation, it was a tradition that I'd long upheld and there were few things outside of sex that felt as good.

The fact that this was my first shower in 210 years made it all the better.

After I'd sent my message to Lexington, the rest of the operation had gone perfectly. The children, a ten-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl, were scared and cold and filthy. But thank whatever deities remained, they were unharmed. Their mother had gotten lucky as well, apparently the raider that had drawn the lucky straw had been just getting down to his task when Goris stormed into the room like a long clawed hurricane to prevent him from continuing.

To my surprise, they'd known about Goris, he'd been staying in their barn, but was off hunting when the raiders hit. A shit bit of luck that, as Desmond would say. Being on good terms with a nigh invincible post-apocalyptic apex predator, and a bunch of half-wit savages show up the one time he's not there.

In any case, we had gotten them out and, considering that their homestead had been burned to the ground and their husband and father murdered, decided that Sanctuary would be a far better place to exfiltrate to. Preston had managed to make his run to Tenpines Bluff and back by the time I returned to the neighborhood with my refugees in tow. He heard their story and almost fell over himself welcoming them and swearing their protection under the Minutemen.

I dunked my head under the spray, letting it hang their, letting my hair form curtains around my face. Preston liked to play the hero, you didn't have to be an analyst to see that. He probably thought everything we were doing was to rebuild the Minutemen.

Hell, maybe it was. I didn't know the exact details, but from the bits that I'd picked up, they were some kind of militia in the vein of the original colonial minutemen. He didn't seem to have a whole lot of understanding of history, but he had enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm was good, enthusiastic locals were easier to talk into charging headfirst into the gaping maw of a machine gun nest. Mikhail and I had handled force multiplication operations with local militia before, Mexico and Belarus.

I didn't doubt that we could rebuild Preston's group, I didn't doubt that we could decimate these half-brained drug addicts that the Commonwealth called raiders. Quite frankly, we could do the latter without assistance, based on my experience so far.

The problems would come afterwards, assuming we didn't find a more competent group.

We would though, the operatives who took Shaun and killed Nathan hadn't been raiders. They were professionals. They had needed Shaun for something, he was the only one they took. He was the outlier, the first rule of analysis, look for the outliers. They didn't just need an infant, they needed one from Vault 111. And why did they need an infant from Vault 111, why not just one from anywhere in this godforsaken wasteland.

There was only one thing that was immediately apparent, unlike pretty much everyone else since the apocalypse, Shaun had never been exposed to radiation or FEV. They had wanted Shaun and no one else, not Nathan, not the other residents in cryo.

"At least we still have the back-up." The words echoed in my mind, the back-up. He'd been looking at me when he said that, he'd been talking to me.

I was the back-up. If Shaun was the primary, then I was too old for whatever ends they had planned. They wanted his DNA, my DNA, that was the only reason they would want him specifically, that was his only unique trait, they wanted the DNA. That was the only reason they'd want me as a back-up, Shaun was my only child.

But I could make more.

Assuming this, then my survival wasn't a fluke, not an accident, it couldn't be. If I was the back-up, then I was specifically kept alive by them, whoever they were. And if I was kept alive, then by definition, that meant that the other residents of the vault had not been, either through direct action or mere indifference, they were responsible for the other deaths. And If I had been kept alive, and through accident or malice the others had been killed, then that meant Mikhail had been kept alive as well.

But why? The obvious answer to that question was something any thirteen-year-old would know, it took two to make a child. But why kill Nate, he was Shaun's father, if they wanted back-ups, then why not spare both of us? Why not have the ability to create the closest possible thing to an exact duplicate of Shaun possible.

There were two possibilities, either the merc, and I was assuming he was a merc because of how different he was from his companions, he had the look of hired muscle, had killed Nathan without permission, then they saved Mikhail to salvage the situation. That was the likely scenario, the other one was that they considered Mikhail a better match for genetic reasons

There was a logical progression here. For one reason or another, they wanted my son's DNA, it was the only reason they would take him in particular. They left me alive because they needed a back-up plan in case something happened to Shaun, they left Mikhail alive for the same reason.

This was bad for multiple reasons. They were after Shaun, and they knew about me, Nathan, and Mikhail. That meant that they had access to pre-war records, and if they knew enough about our genetic structures to target us, then they had access to more than just Vault-Tec records, they had access to in-depth medical records. They also had the ability to open a sealed vault door, something you needed a pipboy with the proper decryption keys or a password to do. Then there were the high end hazmat suits that the people with the mercenary were wearing, those weren't easy to get a hold of before the war, I can't imagine how difficult they are to get now. And the ability to either save Mikhail and I, or kill everyone else in the vault.

So we had an organization with access to pre-war technology, private pre-war records, vault access codes, the abil1ity and willingness to kill everyone in a vault, and the money to afford mercenaries.

There was one organization I knew of that fit that description…

No, there was no way they survived through nuclear fire and two hundred years of hell.

Besides, based on the terminal entries, the abduction had to have happened a minimum of a year after the bombs fell.

I was missing a piece, there was some piece of information that just wasn't there, why had they wanted my child's DNA? What did they need it for? And who were they in the first place? If I could find any of this out, then the rest would just fall into place.

But first I needed to find the man who'd killed Nathan, he'd be able to answer my questions, or at least put me on the right track.

The water ran cold, shocking me out of my analysis and making me realize just how long I'd been in here. I twisted the knob, letting the stream trickle to a stop. Pulling the curtain aside, I stepped out and grabbed the towel off the toilet. My hands looked like prunes, I'd been in there far longer than I'd meant to be.

Still, at least it wasn't a waste of water, I'd gone over the schematics of the vault. The water just flowed down the drain to be purified and reused.

I stepped out into the bedroom of the late Vault 111 overseer. I'd commandeered it for myself, no one else had wanted it. Asher had offered to help me move a bed from the vault, like the others had done, but I'd declined.

I couldn't sleep in my old bedroom, I hadn't tried, but I knew I couldn't. Sleeping in our old bedroom, in our ruined old house, as if nothing had changed, it felt like a mockery of Nathan, of our marriage.

I'd had Codsworth and Asher help move stuff from my bunker into the vault. Nothing massive, just some clothes, some of my books, and a fresh set of sheets for the bed. Well, as fresh as two-hundred-year-old sheets can be. In terms of things I'd done at one in the morning, moving boxes that didn't contain nuclear material was certainly one of the least exciting.

Still, I was grateful for the sweatpants and CIT hoodie to change into, and even more grateful for the 83, 293 now I guess, year old highland single malt.

After a single glass, I tried throwing myself into sleep.

Instead of the amorphous liquid realm of slumber, I ended up hitting a brick wall of insomnia, each brick made of those thoughts that you avoid like the devil in the waking world.

Who was I kidding? I slept here because that house wasn't my home, it had never been my home. Nate had been the one who wanted to move to the suburbs, I'd been perfectly happy in the city. And if I slept there, I'd have to deal with the grief of losing Nate.

Or, far worse, the lack thereof.

It wasn't that I didn't feel terrible about Nathan dying, I did. It wasn't that I didn't have a slow burning flame of hatred in my stomach, demanding vengeance, I did. But it was that familiar old veil that fell on my shoulders, the sadness at the loss of a comrade, a close friend, a brother in arms, and the resolve to avenge him. I felt that, but that's not the way he'd want me to mourn him.

I knew the kind of sadness he'd want me to feel, the shard of ice cold despair piercing my heart, spreading through my gut, and threatening to tear me apart, the kind of sadness that never went away. I'd felt that already, for Ming, and she was the only person I'd ever feel that way for.

There it was, that underlying crack that ran throughout our entire marriage. That sham of a thing we pretended was real, that we pretended wasn't the result of a night when I'd been drunk, stupid, and weak.

I didn't know who to blame more, me for stumbling to his door that night, half drunk, drowning in despair, and desperate for the comfort of human touch. Or him for letting me in, for taking me to his bed, and pretending that it was more than a moment of weakness. Pretending that he could ever take Ming's place.

That night had made Shaun, Shaun…

I didn't know what to do about that, I never had. I'd considered getting rid of the child so many times during the pregnancy. When Karen suggested I take maternity leave, when Nathan proposed, when we'd moved out to the suburbs, when Nathan had been called up for the Anchorage offensive. I'd collapsed in tears the first time I'd visited Ming afterwards, hanging on her hospital bed and begging her unconscious form for forgiveness. I don't know what kept me from going through with it.

There was a gap in me, in my soul. It had formed when they abducted Shaun and it wouldn't be fixed until I had learned his fate, until I had rescued him or, failing that, wrought my vengeance upon his kidnappers.

Still, a tiny part of my mind wondered whether it was really Shaun that I wanted, or if it was just that missing piece that would solve the entire puzzle.

These thoughts bounced around my head as I forced myself to sleep, woke, and forced myself back. After about four hours of this, I gave up. Checking my pipboy, I saw that it was only six, two hours before anyone would be up to do anything. Or at least, that was how it worked before the war, I had no idea how the schedules of post-apocalyptic settlers worked. I was assuming that circadian rhythm was still in effect.

In any case, trying for more sleep was a lost cause, I crawled out of bed, pulled on a pair of socks and shoes, and went out into the office. The former overseer's skeleton no longer sat behind the desk, the shelves were back upright, and the detritus spread across the floor had been swept away. With nothing better to do, I decided to try and catch up on my political philosophy, if one wanted to build a nation, the best way to do it was by using the shoulders of giants as your stepping stones.

Thankfully, Nate had never gotten around to building a proper bookshelf for the doorstoppers I had kept from law school. If he had, they wouldn't have survived in the bunker. I started where all modern philosophy starts, with the ancient Greeks, more specifically Plato. I'm afraid the world as it stood was no more the Kallipolis now than it was when Socrates first imagined it. Capital only reminded me that Marx must have been grinning smugly in his grave, having been proven right. Hobbes's points never seemed more relevant. Eventually I fell back on my personal favorite, Machiavelli, Il Principe.

If we were going to stabilize the wasteland, democracy was out of the question for the immediate future. A single leader with little to no accountability wasn't something that I usually advocated, but this wasn't the time for a slow moving bureaucracy, or representatives jockeying for power and pushing regional interests. We needed centralized leadership that could make decisions as needed and respond to crises as they arose. Mikhail could handle all of that, I've never been one for inspirational speeches.

The passage talking about the purging of one's political enemies brought me back to Marcy Long. She was a destabilizing factor, an agitator. A big part of me thought that I should arrange an accident for her now, before a conflict could arise and her sudden death would arouse suspicion. Still, it was too much of a risk, if anything went wrong, all of the others from Preston's group would raise hell.

There was a knock on the door, pulling me from my political ruminations. "Come in."

The door slid open and in stepped the strangest sight I'd seen since waking up from cryo. A robed deathclaw with his hood down, and a tiny set of spectacles perched on its… snout? I didn't know what to call it and it seemed rude to ask.

I stood up as he entered, "What can I do for you Goris?"

Goris waved a claw dismissively, "Please, don't get up on my account. I merely seek peace and good conversation."

I sat back down and grabbed the bottle of scotch from last night, or this morning, whatever it was. I poured myself a fresh glass. I held up the bottle, "I can't promise either, but would you like a glass?"

I had no idea if these things even drank, I had no real idea of anything about them really. The level of incongruity between Goris and the beast I had encountered in Concord was too immense to be comprehended. Still, it was polite.

"Yes, thank you." He took a few steps forward and sat down on his haunches. I dug another glass out of the desk and poured us each a finger.

I took a sip, enjoying the rich vanilla taste. "Goris, tell me about your… I don't mean to say it like this, but, your kind? I killed a member of your species in Concord, and in comparison to you…"

Goris picked the glass up between his thumb claw and forefinger claw and brought it to his toothy maw, taking a small drink. "You're wondering if we are all intelligent." I nodded, "That is a complex question, if you're wondering if you could have talked them down, then the answer is no. The majority of my brethren lack the… social skills that myself and my pack have."

"Pack? Are there more like you?" if there were more like Goris, I needed to get them on my side. These things were, quite simply, the deadliest thing I'd ever encountered. They were like organic tanks, all the armor of a Hannibal MBT, all the grace and flexibility of a tiger.

The look on his face wiped any ideas I had about the force multiplication potential. I hadn't thought such a beastly face capable of projecting such profound sadness. "No," his voice was quiet, and his next words were barely audible. "Not anymore."

That could only mean one thing, my hand went unconsciously to my collar. "I'm sorry."

He took another sip of his drink, "Thank you," his voice still quiet. Then he shook his head, as if trying to shake himself out of a dark memory. When he spoke again, his voice was normal. "But to answer your question, it depends on which definition intelligence you subscribe to. In terms of animal intelligence, hunting, killing, social structuring, etcetera, they are extremely intelligent. Most of my species have some human cognitive ability, the human named Piaget would probably describe them as being in the sensorimotor stage. Some progress further than that, and there are groups in the Midwest that have matched my pack in intelligence, though I believe them to be a different species entirely. But as far as I can tell, only my pack are the only true deathclaws capable of abstract thought and reason."

They were widespread enough to have a subspecies, and most of them were unintelligent animals out to kill whoever their instincts told them to kill. Perfect, "Don't take this as offensive please, but I'm surprised you're familiar with Piaget."

"The vault my pack made its home in was stocked with a large amount of human literature, something to which I am infinitely grateful for. And I've made a habit of procuring any information I can in my travels." He was from a vault, interesting.

"So, pardon my bluntness, your species was the result of another of Vault-Tec's little experiments?" I gestured to our surroundings. "So is my continued survival for the past 210 years."

He took another long drink and closed his eyes. "The vault was our home, but we did not come from the vault. I cannot tell you exactly how our species began, though I assume we are the result of contamination by the Forced Evolutionary Virus, deliberate or accidental, as most of the creatures of the wasteland are. My pack in particular was captured and genetically modified by a group claiming to descend from the pre-war government…"

No, no, it couldn't be them, those idiotic plans couldn't have worked. They had to be dead, of all the people who died in nuclear fire, how could those most deserving of horrible and painful deaths survive. "The Enclave?"

Please say no, please say no, please, please, please, for the love of what little in this world is sacred, say no.

His eyes opened and he blinked in surprise, "Yes, how did you…"

"Damn it!" I slammed my fist on the desk hard enough to make the glasses rattle. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" I dropped my head to the desk. Taking a deep breath, I slowly calmed my fury into a simmering hatred, then pulled myself back up, looking Goris in the eyes. "They are not descendants of the pre-war government, if they are who they claim they are, they are descendants of a small cabal of bought senators, CEOs, corrupt high ranking military officers, and the vice president who used their positions of power and various pawns to further their own interests."

"You…" Goris spoke slowly, like he was choosing his words as carefully as possible. "Have had dealings with them then?"

For some reason, a mad laugh burbled up out of my throat. "You could say that." I downed the rest of my drink and poured myself another two fingers. "They killed my mother, they broke the love of my life, and they nearly destroyed the organization to which I dedicated my life." I sat back in my chair, sighing, "Yeah, you could say I've had dealings."

His head dipped, "You have my sympathies, if it helps, I understand your pain. They wiped out my pack, and desecrated my home."

I fixed him with a hard gaze, "Thank you, but I don't need your sympathies, I need your information. You're going to tell me anything you know about them, particularly current members and locations. Even if they are just taking an old name they found in some pre-war database, that organization will not be allowed to exist."

At that, he bared his teeth. For a second I thought my demand had pissed him off. Then I realized it.

He was grinning. "I'm afraid you're too late for that. Myself and a few friends broke into their headquarters on an oil rig, and we destroyed it with nuclear fire. The NCR, I'm sorry, New California Republic, cleared them out of the west coast. And from what I understand the division in Washington D.C. was destroyed by the Brotherhood of Steel."

His answer left me with a lot more questions, but at least those idiots were taken care of. "I've got quite a few questions for you, if you don't mind?"

Goris nodded, "I'll happily answer them, but if I may, I have a question for you first."

I didn't like that, one answer for many usually meant the one question was personal. Still, I needed information. "Sure, name it."

"The raider, the one you allowed to escape. You terrified him, purposefully I believe, but then you let him go, why?" he cocked his head to the side quizzically.

Not nearly as personal as I was expecting. "Force multiplication, if it worked, he'll be running straight to Lexington to tell a, no doubt exaggerated, story about a technological demon wiping out his crew. The fact that I mentioned their leader by name and referenced this 'Sight' that he's obsessed with, makes it more likely they'll take him seriously, and if they believe that it's only their leader this strange new enemy is after, they might begin to splinter. Best case scenario, they fracture and start killing themselves, worst case scenario, the raider is hiding in a hole somewhere praying he never sees me again." I went to take another sip, but stopped myself, a good scotch is to be savored after all. "it's a no lose situation."

Goris made a gravelly throat clearing noise that I assumed was the deathclaw version of "Hmm. And what about the melodramatic part about the Reaper?"

Ah, that was one of my favorite parts. "Psychological warfare, melodramatic though it may be. The second you can qualify something; it becomes less terrifying. Once you know something is flesh and blood, you know you can kill it. Something unknown, something that sparks imagination, and lets your primal fears run wild. That's what brings true terror."

Goris's eyes looked at me a little too perceptively for my liking. "But you enjoyed it, correct?"

That gave me pause, but I answered honestly, "Yeah, I enjoy reminding ingrates like that what a real monster looks like."

Goris gave me an interesting look, then raised his glass, out of etiquette, I mirrored him.

"To monsters."

I grinned.

"To monsters."

 **…**

 **Okay guys, last one for this week, I should probably stop saying this because they're all expositiony, but yeah, this one is expositiony to. I wanted to demonstrate an analysts perspective of the early game situations. I tried to look at the situation solely based on the information available to a first time player at this point in the game, but considering I'm on my seventh or eighth playthrough, my outsider knowledge might have bled through. Does anyone think the logic I presented is faulty, if so feel free to tell me so I can rework it.**

 **I do think that the ending leaves a bit to be desired, I was kind of petering out at that point and just trying to write myself through to an ending. What do you guys think?**

 **Also how do you like Goris, he's an interesting character to write for.**

 **In case you can't tell, I yearn for feedback, my liberal arts mind needs stimulation other than this bloody math course.**

 **Either way R &R people.**


	10. Chapter 10

We were gathered around the table in Rosa's old place. It was me, Mikhail, Preston, Sturges, and the newest member of our impromptu council, Goris. Mikhail stood at the head of the table, his pipboy's holographic projector hovered just above eye level, the 3D map of the Commonwealth projected over the table. Goris and I were the last to arrive.

Preston nodded to us as we entered, "Alright, everyone's here, let's get started."

Mikhail held up a hand, "Almost, we're still waiting on one more."

Preston wasn't the only one confused, I raised an eyebrow, "And who else is invited?"

Sturges was tinkering with some bit of machinery or another that I didn't recognize. "Technically, this isn't a council or anything, just a bunch of us meeting in my new workshop. So nobody really needs an invite."

Preston shot him a look. I almost had to laugh, it was adorable in its own way, how professional and official he was so desperate to seem. Still, I was curious. "Who are we waiting on Mikhail?" I earned a few curious gazes of my own at the question. Probably because I asked in Russian.

My question was answered by Mikhail's wolfish grin, and by Asher walking in with a machete in one hand and a wet sack in the other. Preston and Sturges stared, I looked between the boy I'd found in Concord and the Russian. Goris was inscrutable beneath his hood.

You've been in the business far too long when you know exactly what a man's head in a sack looks like. Mikhail asked, "is it done?"

Asher nodded, looking a little green, though that could have been because of the smell. "Da ser." He tossed the bag on the table, he'd knotted the opening to keep the bag closed. I wondered if Mikhail had told him to do that, the first time I delivered a head in a bag, nobody had told me to do that and when I set the bag down, the head rolled out.

Mikhail took the head and set it in the, non-functional, fridge. The seals still worked, so it helped the smell at least. "Good, keep the blade, I've got a hundred of them. Come, join us." He motioned for Asher to take a place at the table.

He did as he was bid, earning a look of confusion from Preston. I gave him a nod, offering a reassuring smile his way, and sending a message with my eyes to Mikhail. We'd be talking about this later. He just kept grinning in response, "Shall we get started."

There was a moment of silence as no one knew who was supposed to go first. I decided that it might as well be me. "The raiders at Walden Pond are off the board. Five hostiles dead, three hostages rescued, and one ally encountered, Goris." I gestured to Goris.

Who took his cue to introduce himself. "Thank you for that, Rebecca and the children didn't deserve what they went through, I only wish that we could have saved Mark." I assumed those were the names of the woman whose family we'd rescued, and the husband who'd been killed.

Preston was the one to respond of course. "I'm sorry we weren't able to help more, but it's an honor to have you all here." He cleared his throat, "I went to Tenpines Bluff last night and met with their leader."

I smirked, "Let me guess, they're sympathetic to the cause but need proof we're worth their time."

The minuteman looked at me with a mixture of irritation and embarrassment. "Yeah, they'll put their support behind us, but only if we can clear the raiders out of Lexington."

"Perfect, so they'll help, but only after we don't need their help." God, I hate coalition building.

That just made Preston more irritated, "Our goal is to help people, whether they're helping us or not."

This man had a hero complex so huge, I'm surprised he didn't wear a cape. Don't get me wrong, I respect his intentions, but idealism can only go so far, eventually you have to figure out how to do the job. Still, no point in fighting over the issue now. "Mikhail, how'd recon on the sat station go? And perhaps you'd like to elaborate about the head in the bag."

Mikhail folded his arms and laughed, he was having way too much fun with this. "There is good news on that front." He brought the hologram in on Satellite Station Olivia. "I was able to get close enough to jack into the satellite array, the ISA network is still active. The satellite array here on earth and the network in orbit are locked in safe mode, but if we can get inside and enter the authorization codes…"

"We can get full satellite support." That meant comms, surveillance, full access to our database, possibly even orbital fire support. With that level of support, securing the region would become housecleaning more than anything else.

Mikhail nodded, "Exactly, I counted about twenty four hostiles, six on the surface at any given time, an irregular rotating guard schedule, they sent out a raiding force of about eighteen, armed similarly to the force in Concord, one was armed with a minigun, female, cackling like a lunatic."

"That's Ack-Ack, I've met her, she's almost as insane as Jared." This was Asher, I had my eyes on his shoulders and throat, looking for signs of a panic attack, thankfully I found none. "She likes to have people thrown off the walkway on the satellite, tries to kill them with her minigun before they hit the ground."

Ah, delightful woman. It made sense though. In my experience with groups like this before the war, their leaders ruled through fear, they needed to commit acts of extreme brutality on a regular basis to keep their people in line. "I've been inside that place, if we go in hard, all they have to do is seal the security doors and wait us out."

Mikhail didn't respond for a moment, then he looked at Asher, "What do you think we should do?"

I threw him a blink-and-miss-it glare, and turned to Asher, ready to offer him an out. The thoughtful look on his face gave me pause. He didn't look too far out of his depth, I'd give him a shot, jump in if he needed help.

Asher laid the machete on the table and eyed the hologram, for a minute or two, he didn't speak, just looked. Then, just when I was about to move in to cover him, a look of recognition sparked in his eye, he had it. "Back home, in this old submarine berth, part of it was underground, all of it was under a bunch of concrete and there were only two entrances. One was a door to the outside near the top, the other was underwater. I used to poke around, they had a vent system, if it got clogged, you couldn't breathe." He pointed to a small box on the edge of the perimeter, "There was a box that looked like that, I figure if you turn that off, and seal the doors from the outside…"

A cocksure grin only a teenager could pull off broke across his face. "Won't even have to waste the bullets."

Mikhail nodded, "Not bad, but not exactly."

The grin faltered, I stepped in. "Too clean, and too slow. It's a big bunker, suffocation would take days, and we need disfigured corpses to dump on Lexington. We'll gas the place, then go in and put a bullet in the head of anyone still twitching." Asher nodded, good, he knew enough to learn. I turned to Sturges, "if I get you a shopping list, you think you can come up with what I need."

"Depends on what you need," Sturges scratched his chin. "But yeah, I'll do my best."

"Hold on a damn moment." Preston slammed his fist on the table, making it shake so much I feared it would collapse. After two hundred years, I was amazed it was still standing. "What the hell are we talking about here? Gassing people, dumping bodies in Lexington," He gestured towards the fridge, "whatever the hell that is. This isn't the way the Minutemen are supposed to work. This isn't what we're about."

Mikhail was diplomatic. "Preston, we're just trying to clear an enemy out of a secure position. As for Lexington, it's the same situation. Standard psychological warfare tactics, we scare them into making a move, fracturing, coming at us, doing something to get them into a less favorable position. We're securing the region, helping people."

Preston wasn't convinced, "So let's do it the right way. We have the T-45, we have enough guns and ammo to outfit an army. Let's hit the raiders at the satellite, if they lock us out, we wait them out. And that nonsense with Lexington needs to stop right now, the Minutemen are symbols of hope for the Commonwealth, we can't do that if we're stooping down to the raiders' level."

Well that was pointless, I looked at Preston, "you done?" I wasn't feeling so diplomatic at the moment, before he could respond, I turned to Sturges. "Smith had a drug lab in his basement, that's the house at the curve of the street, his ventilation system won't be functional at this point. Take Jun and Asher, disassemble his stuff and get it up top where I can use it."

"Hey, are you even listening to…" He trailed off when I looked back at him with a laser glare fueled by my nuclear reactor eyes. Thank you mom, your eyes were the best gift I ever could have gotten from you.

"No," I shook my head slowly as I spoke, "Perhaps you'd consider saying something worth listening to." This was good, it was better to get this out of the way early on. "Preston, the problem here is that you are letting your idealism blind you to reality." A common problem among regular army troops before the war, that's why I stuck with special forces as much as I could.

I held up my hand and counted as I spoke. "One, you are under the impression that you are critical to what we're doing. I'm not listening because I don't have to. Since we met you, Mikhail and I have done all the heavy lifting in terms of combat, we have made all the plans, and to put it bluntly, you've done almost nothing." I gestured to the two at the table who now stood in uncomfortable awkwardness. "Sturges and Asher have been of far more use than you have."

I raised another finger, "Two, I don't much give a damn about resurrecting your failed organization. I'm only playing my part in this in order to guarantee a safe fallback point and secure resources for the search for my son. Mikhail might wish to use the name in order to open doors and make connections through their reputation, but we can make do without it, or use it regardless of you. So what the Minutemen did or did not do, or what they would or wouldn't do, could not be further from relevancy."

Preston was literally shaking with rage as he stared daggers at me, that didn't bother me. I've broken bigger and more dangerous men than him. I raised the third finger, "And three. If the Minutemen were anything like what you've described, I can see why they died out. They were quite simply, morons. Morons that, I don't know how long they lasted, I'm shocked lasted more than a year. The way you describe their method of operation, the 'right way' as you put it, involves a massive waste of time and resources for no gain whatsoever." I was reasonably certain that they hadn't operated that way, considering how well known they seemed, they must have achieved some level of success. Preston was idealizing them in an odd sort of mental memorial to the fallen organization.

I folded my arms. "The concept of a fair fight died with the advent of the machine gun, and intelligent leaders disdained the concept long before that. The right way to conduct combat operations is the way that guarantees your victory, ensures the survival of as many of your people as possible, and minimizes the expenditure of time and resources. Not the way that looks best in the movies." That last bit didn't work as well as it would have two hundred and ten years ago, but the reference hit its target. I unfolded my arms and put my palms flat on the table, leaning forward. "Preston, if you don't like the way we're going about things, that's fine. You're free to leave, as is anyone who wishes to join you, though I doubt anyone other than Marcy would, though she would drag Jun with her."

Preston Garvey wanted to kill me at this point, that was fact. I wish to make it very clear that I do not enjoy this, Preston wasn't the raider from the night before, he was a good man desperate to protect his people, desperate to atone for past failures, and desperate to be a hero. I could understand that, I could respect that, I could admire it even.

But I couldn't use it. "And I'm sure that you would lead them quite gloriously to your deaths or enslavement, just as you always have."

That was the final push, the straw that broke the camel's back. Preston suddenly went very still, his expression morphing from rage to shock and back again. Then he exploded, "Fuck you! Fuck you and your standard fucking tactics! The Minutemen have stood for over a century, and they'll stand just fucking fine without you."

His hands curled into fists, and I expected him to come at me. I give him credit for being smarter than that. Instead, he just stormed out of the house.

There was a tense silence for a moment after that where you could have heard a pin drop. I turned back to Sturges. "So how's this secret project of yours going?"

Sturges scratched the back of his head, not looking me in the eye. "Good, gimme another two days and it'll be ready."

I grinned, trying to defuse the tension. "Any chance you're going to tell me what it is?"

Sturges actually managed to smile a bit at that, "not until its done ma'am, not until it works."

Mikhail took over, "Alright, I think that's enough for now. Let's meet again tonight."

Sturges took that as his cue to leave. Asher stood there, unsure of what he was supposed to do. "Asher," I kept my tone pleasant, he'd just seen the cruel side of me and I didn't want to spook him. "Why don't you go help Sturges with the drug lab?" He nodded, taking the hint, and grabbed his new machete before darting after Sturges.

Mikhail grabbed the projector node and reattached it to his pipboy. "That was far harsher than it needed to be."

"I have to concur Madison; you could have been a touch more tactful." Goris spoke from under his hood, his gravelly voice somehow neutral and reproachful at the same time.

I shrugged, "I don't think so, but it had to be done."

Mikhail gave me a look, but didn't disagree. "You could have been a little more gentle though. I know you have not spent much time with him, but Preston took a long hard road to get to Concord."

This is why I love working with Mikhail, we complimented one another, in skills and, usually, in perspectives. "Maybe, but that needed to be hard, and we don't have time to hold everyone's hand. Besides, now I'm the bitch so you don't have to be."

Mikhail nodded, acknowledging the truth in that. "Perhaps I have missed something," Goris tapped one of his claws on the table, earning a wary stare from Mikhail, reminding me that he didn't know what Goris really was. "But could you explain to me why that was necessary?"

I turned to him. "Preston needed to be broken, he wants to do things his way, or the way they did in his old group. We can't solely exist to support what little pride he has left. He either needs to be broken and rebuilt to serve our interests, or moved off the board entirely. How he reacts to this decides which one that is."

Goris's hood hid any expression he might have had. "I see."

Speaking of hand holding, "What was that shit with Asher?"

Mikhail opened the fridge and pulled out the head, allowing the oh so delightful smell of decomposing flesh to fill the room again. "Sending him to retrieve the raider leader's head from Concord, or asking his input on the Satstation Olivia op?"

I'd have to find a more private moment to reveal Goris's true nature, I could see Marcy staring at us through the paneless window. "Both, why didn't you talk to me about it beforehand?"

"Walk and talk, I've got a prisoner at the gas station." He started for the door. "I didn't talk to you first because I realized you were right to recruit him. I stopped seeing him as your charity case and started seeing him as a real asset."

."

This was good, but half of my mind was still pissed. "You still should've come to me first, I don't want to see him hurt."

Mikhail eyed me warily, concern taking form on her face. "Madison, what is with you and this kid?" He paused, lowering his voice. "Is this because of Shaun?"

What? I shook my head, "No, this has absolutely nothing to do with Nate or Shaun."

Mikhail met my eyes, he was one of the few people who could tell when I was lying. When he saw that I wasn't, he nodded in acceptance. That was good, because I wasn't entirely sure if I wasn't lying to myself. "He is my first recruit for the reformed Vympel. You're right about Preston, he doesn't have the… moral flexibility required for it. He'll be great for standard operations if he gets over this, but he was never meant for special forces."

At least we were on the same page on that. I couldn't argue with his logic, Asher did need a role in this fledgling community, a reason to give people like Marcy for his presence. And he already knew how to shoot a gun, wasn't in terrible physical condition, had a modicum of intelligence and a familiarity with the human landscape. And his time with the raiders meant he had the proper mindset for the moral gymnastics that being in the Vympel required.

It was a sound tactical decision. I just happened to dislike it.

"So we're sending the head to Lexington with this prisoner?"

Mikhail nodded, "Psychological warfare, it's like wooing a gold digger, all about the little presents."

I laughed, "Yeah, I already sent them one last night."

Mikhail laughed too, "I grabbed mine off the perimeter of the satstation when he went for a piss. Knocked him out from behind and left him to stew in utter darkness in the gas station's garage. He should have screamed himself raw by now."

I laughed even harder at that, we were both going to hell for being sadistic pricks..

But at least I'd be in good company.

 **…...**

 **Sup guys, I don't much care for Preston, can you tell?**

 **I don't know what it is, but something about his personality just pisses me off. I don't even know how much of it is in-game and how much is just my imagination running wild. At some point, in my mind, Preston just developed a huge holier than thou attitude and superiority complex that needed to be torn down.**

 **Perhaps I'm just insane. I'm kidding of course.**

 **There's no perhaps about it.**

 **Either way, this is another one that I'm not too sure about. More and more I'm having to force this stuff out. My Dragon Age stories, my Skyrim story, and my Andromeda story are really calling to me. Still, I'm going to keep pushing as best I can. By the way, to those of you who have left reviews, thank you, I love you guys, that stuff makes my day.**

 **R &R Guys, until next week.**


	11. Chapter 11

As it turned out, Mikhail was right. By the time we reached the Red Rocket, the only sounds coming from the old back office of the gas station were the occasional cough and desperate calls from a cracked and dry voice.

The fear of the dark and the unknown is the most primal instinct in the human animal. It can break a grown man as easily as a two-year-old.

Why do you think fire was our first invention?

That is one way of dealing with it; avoidance, I don't like this, keep it away from me, a perfectly reasonable response.

The other way is to throw yourself into the darkness and immerse yourself in it until you drown or learn to breathe.

There are only two kinds of people in the world, those who hide from the darkness, and those who take their power from it.

That was the difference between the raider trapped in that office, who fought the darkness by pretending he was a big enough monster that he had nothing to fear, and Mikhail, who was a big enough monster to make the darkness his friend.

It didn't take the raider long to realize that. Most of what he had to say, we already knew, but it helped cement the fear into him. I always enjoy a good interrogation, a comparison of styles. As I've said, spetsnaz are blunt instruments. You can best understand that when you're on the other side of the door, listening to the screams and sobs.

"Uncomfortable?" Goris seemed slightly out of sorts, he flicked his tail more. Even someone as inhuman as him had a body language, and I had a skill with languages.

"Slightly," The honesty was refreshing. "Your methods are much more… elegant than your friend's."

Fair, "Mikhail is sending a message, these raiders only understand brutality. The only way to deal with them is by making them believe that you're worse than they are. You saw them all the time in Africa way back when." I wondered if somewhere in the world a university still functioned, those similarities would make for a great sociology doctoral thesis. "But you are right, my girlfriend put it best, I wine and dine, Mikhail throws you down on the bed, tears your clothes off, and gets right to business."

"I believe the word for that is rape." Not necessarily, there were a few nights when Ming or I would get off of our classes or work, nights where we didn't need words or wine.

Still, Goris might have more delicate sensibilities than I gave him credit for. "Considering what that bastard's probably done, he deserves a little turnabout of the mental variety."

He must have read my mind, "Madison, I have no problem with doing objectively terrible things, so long as they create more good than the evil they are. Do you have an endgame this is building up to?"

A utilitarian consequentialist, a deathclaw after my own heart. "You mean, do I have a specific plan that all these fear tactics are building up to."

He nodded, "yes."

I was used to assuaging guilty consciences. So I sighed and rolled my shoulders. "The short answer is no."

I could almost feel his eyebrow going up, metaphorically speaking of course. "No?"

"No," I shook my head. "Only a fool creates a battleplan and sets it in stone, a single plan of attack can't account for the human factor. A wise strategist leaves his opponent many paths that all lead to the same place."

A particularly loud scream cut me off. "Please General, I'll do anything you want… just please stop!"

I hoped Mikhail wasn't doing his job too well, the raider was replaceable, but I hate wasting effort. "As I was saying, leave them many paths that all lead to defeat."

"And what paths are you leaving them?" there was a shift in his tone, from discomfort to curiosity. Good, I much preferred dealing with an intellectual equal than a moral objector.

I leaned back on the wall, "Ideally, fear infects them and creates dissension in the ranks. I'd bet on this Lonnie woman that Asher told me about. She's the only remaining lieutenant, and she doesn't get along with the leader. If she can lead a revolt, then in the best case scenario, they do our work for us and kill enough of each other that they're no longer a significant threat." I was considering recruitment, I had an in through Asher, but I'd need more intel before I even thought about making the approach. "Otherwise, we push them to make a move, if they come after us, if we can get them on open ground, we can just mow them down with the minigun, mines, and sniping." I grinned, "And you, of course."

"And if they don't do either?"

"Then we've rattled them, made it harder to sleep at night, made them paranoid and jumping at ghosts. That will make them make mistakes and make the infiltration and assault easier if we're forced into that." I'd worked out all the trajectories for this.

"An interesting strategy, Mingan would approve of it." Goris muttered the last part, as if speaking to himself. I made a mental note to ask who Mingan was sometime.

Mikhail stepped out of the office, making sure to slam the door behind him. I threw an eyeroll his way, "General Winter, really?"

He just smirked, "You have room to talk, Reaper?"

I put two fingers above my heart, "Touche. When are you cutting him loose?"

He was already heading for the door, not that it mattered much, the windows worked just as well without glass. "Tonight, He knows his way to Lexington. Apparently the Corvega group had very strong ties to the other two locals."

"About what we got from Asher," As I said, we weren't getting anything we didn't already know.

"Apparently Ack-Ack and the Corvega leader used to be lovers. Things went south when Jared started spiking her Calmex with Psycho, got her addicted. She has not been entirely right in the head since." We were joined by Dogmeat as we stepped into the sunlight.

"Can we use that?" Kidnapping an old flame might be something out of a Silver Shroud episode, but it worked more often than not.

Mikhail shook his head. "Apparently she hates him for experimenting on her, and he hates her for not letting him experiment on her. Same plan as before, we liquidate the Olivia group and move on to Lexington."

That reminded me. "Hold on."

"What is it?" Mikhail brought his weapon up, scanning for hostiles.

I held up a hand. "Not that kind of hold on. While we've got some privacy, Goris, perhaps you'd like to reintroduce yourself."

Goris nodded and, without ceremony or pause, threw back his hood to reveal his face. To Mikhail's credit, he barely reacted, I suppose that by now he already knew Goris wasn't going to randomly gut him. In the end, he just offered a restrained, "Alright then."

"I am unused to humans reacting so casually to my appearance." Goris quickly pulled his hood back up, obscuring his head in the folds once more.

"I have lost all expectations for this new porno mir." He shook his head and we continued along the road.

"You remember Gorski, that old nut who used to show up at homeowners' association meetings to complain?" We crested the hill, from here there was a nice view of Concord.

Mikhail snorted, "Yeah, he thought the homeowners' association had something to do with that electric tower they built in his front yard. What about him?"

I popped my fingers as we reached the bridge. "His cabin has a whole pack of what Asher calls ghouls, of the feral variety. You should take Preston and clear them out, work out a little of his anger that way and help secure our position. Take Asher too, he could use the experience."

"Agreed, I'll send Preston your way afterwards."

"Are you sure that is wise? Preston is unlikely to forgive you for this morning so quickly?" there was a slight clacking as Goris tapped his claws against one another.

"Yeah, he'll need something from me to mend his wounded pride, otherwise it'll just fester." Pride was such a dangerous thing, too little and you were a doormat, too much and you were fighting off attacks that weren't there.

I left Goris and Mikhail to their business while I went off to mine, more specifically, the business of chemical warfare. Asher and Sturges had just finished moving everything into the open when I got there. Sturges had managed to pull together my shopping list, so I sent the two of them on their way. Sturges to his secret project, Asher to meet with Mikhail and Preston. Now it was time to set to work.

There are many kinds of chemical weapons, but they can all be classified under one of three types. Nerve agents are, or were, I suppose, a favorite for the US Military due to their lethality. They work by disrupting, as the name implies, your nervous system. Then there are blister agents, also known as vesicants, these irritate and burn any part of the human body they come in contact with. Finally, there are choking agents. These are similar to blister agents, but are specifically designed to fuck with the lungs once inhaled.

Each one, from a combat perspective, has its own pros and cons. Nerve agents are highly lethal and kill quickly, but are hard to make and in most cases difficult to disperse. Blister agents are highly persistent and hard to protect against, but that cuts both ways, so going in to early can cause as many problems for you as for the enemy. It also has the added benefit of disfigurement as a psychological warfare component. Choking agents are easy to make and disperse, but are usually uncontrollable after dispersal.

The unique challenge posed to ISA scientists was to develop an easily dispersible agent with all the lethality of a nerve agent, but did not persist for long after deployment. It needed to be inert by the time an assault force went in, and it had to degrade in the body after death so that it wouldn't show up in a tox screen.

If this doesn't seem like an impossible task, then you clearly haven't paid attention. And to top it all off, there was the general rule of ISA R&D, they had to make it using materials that would be easily available in a third world country. This was the most difficult part, and I have no idea how they pulled it off, probably because I'm not a chemist. They created a colorless, odorless gas, that can clear an enclosed space in fifteen minutes and dissipate within thirty. The only factor that they couldn't handle was making it untraceable, it wouldn't appear on a toxicology report, but no one would ever mistake the death for anything natural.

The effects were not pretty to say the least; hemorrhaging would cause blood to leak out of the ears and nose and fill the whites of the eyes, and the convulsions were so severe that they could break bones and twist the body into unnatural positions. I was of no doubt that it would do the job, clearing out bunkers was essentially what it was designed to do, it was just a matter of how much was needed; because of its lack of persistency, if there wasn't enough to completely fill the bunker with lethal doses, it wouldn't kill them all.

In the old days, its official designation was XX-28, the twenty eighth variation of the twentieth formula they tried. We called it the Lady's Vengeance, or Lima Victor.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned how it's made, or even listed those easily obtainable ingredients.

Yeah, that's classified, move along.

 **…**

 **Hey guys, we get two this week, one today and one tomorrow.**

 **What did you think of this one? Quick not, porno mir, translates to fucking world. I don't like doing translations in text because I like to further knowledge of foreign cultures by forcing you guys to look them up… has nothing to do with my laziness, nothing at all. (innocent whistling here) But this one has an interesting pronunciation so to speak.**

 **Also, ISA is basically going to be my primary excuse for lore breaking tech and applied phlebtonium for this story, so if anyone has a problem with that, tell me now. I can't promise I'll change it, but I will look into other options.**

 **One more thing, I have officially found the only type of review I dislike, spam. Messenger777, man I respect all religions to a degree, I think your version in particular is wacky, but I respect it. But get it the hell out of my metaphorical face, this isn't the place for that. I find it especially grating that you left it on chapter one, which means you probably didn't even read the story. Guys, I'm serious, feel free to sing my praises in reviews or tell me just how shitty my story truly is, feel free to throw me story ideas for fallout or other categories, talk about lore, question certain aspects, recommend games or mods or movies or whatever, but do not, and I mean this, do not spam me. Talk about whatever you want in the reviews, I love hearing from you guys, I truly do, just try and keep it somewhat tangentially related to the story.**

 **It is in this sense of newfound appreciation that I thank everyone who's left a real review.**

 **jern0013**

 **Rayven NightShade**

 **KrossPhelps**

 **LotusBlossomGenie**

 **I love you guys, you make my day. To all of my followers and favorites and just anyone who's stumbled in from the cold of the internet, drop me a line sometime, you guys are the reason I do this and I love to hear from all of you.**

 **Okay, rant over, R &R as always.**

 **See you tomorrow people.**


	12. Chapter 12

With a tank of Lima Victor prepped and ready for dispersal, I turned my attention to the future. And that future would of course be crafted in the tomb of my past.

All dramatics aside, there's one aspect of nation building that lacks any form of excitement, but cannot be ignored.

Paperwork.

This is where being a lawyer comes in handy when you're a covert operative. Paperwork creates legitimacy, legitimacy creates authority. The coalition of settlements that Mikhail and Preston were building needed to be bound by more than just a handshake and a sense of honor. We needed a commitment, an ironclad doctrine outlining exactly what we owed and what was owed to us. It needed to be part contract, part charter, and part declaration.

Naturally I couldn't rely on American law, or any of the other old world laws, but the basic theories still applied. As did the theories of political philosophy, that's the great thing about the greatest philosophers, their work is timeless and can be applied anywhere. Of course, one needed to be able to apply them to the current circumstances, that required knowledge of the situation. Not only the Commonwealth, but the new world as a whole."

So I gathered the two best people I could think of for that. Goris was extremely well travelled, he'd mentioned civilization out west, but he was new to the Commonwealth, Sturges was the best that I could do on that. He wasn't as well travelled as Preston or Asher, but I was quickly learning he was the most reasonable of the rabble we'd dragged in, and he had a surprisingly keen mind.

Goris was good enough to have a book on the New California Republic law, the major power that had risen on the west coast. It wasn't hard to tell that most of it was a cut and paste version of American law. From Goris's description, they were making a lot of the same mistakes that we did. Too much bureaucracy, too many special interests, too much nationalist expansionism. Still, they had maintained a solid footing for over a century and were the primary power in all of California. But they were bloated and slow now, they had the luxury of it, we didn't.

We needed to be quick and decisive, I already knew that. And by the time we'd finished discussing the NCR, Goris and Sturges agreed with me. Though Goris remained cautious of putting too much power in the hands of one individual. Apparently there had been something similar in Arizona, creating an organization based loosely on the Roman Empire, called Caesar's Legion. I had to give the man behind it, this Caesar, credit. He'd apparently managed to expand his zone of control over Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado.

Still, Mikhail had been in this sort of position before, I knew he could be trusted with the complete authority I intended to give him. The most important part would be creating a strong chain of command and forging a civilian government once the situation was stable enough to allow it.

Yes, yes, the refrain of conquerors. Freedom after security, I'm aware of just how many atrocities were carried out using that justification. Here's the thing, democracy is probably the worst starter government ever devised. A thorough look through history will reveal that every successful democracy in history has arisen from a more longstanding and authoritative government. Even the first western democracy, Athens, was midwifed into greatness by the greatest tyrant in human history.

In any case, we were in agreement that for the moment, a military chain of command would do. Goris was aware of yet another group that had adopted this method. The Brotherhood of Steel claimed to be descended from fragments of the American Military. Whether or not this was true didn't matter much, but they did have a distinctly militaristic hierarchy, though they sounded like they'd taken a lot of their inspiration from fantasy novels, at least in terms of titles. They were of the opinion that they were the only ones responsible enough to possess pre-war technology. This apparently had the side effects of making them incredibly well equipped with power armor and energy weapons, and making them incredibly isolationist therefore keeping their numbers low.

The exceptions to this were chapters in the Midwest, where they were apparently building their own little empire, and chapters in DC where they had set up in the pentagon and rendering aid to the surrounding areas, or at least they used to, apparently they'd gone the route of empire as well. Certainly a possible threat to be considered, but much like the NCR, that's a problem to be considered at a later date.

In any case, we should be fine, so long as we avoided the dogma and ideology that gave them their sense of obsessive superiority. I've never cared for cults, especially ones dedicated to mutual masturbation.

Once we hammered out the system of command, we were able to move on to the specifics of the deal we were offering to the settlements. They wouldn't like the taxation system, but if the reformed Minutemen were going to function, they would need resources. And if I'm being honest, I'd need resources for my hunt for Shaun.

Sturges was the one who offered up the idea of a famine safety net. Apparently, the vast majority of the settlements that we would be recruiting would be farming settlements, the idea that a bad season wouldn't guarantee starvation would be very appealing, and it would make the taxation system easier to stomach. It would also help keep the Minutemen relevant, people might forget external threats if they were kept at bay for long enough, but every farmer I've ever met lives in constant fear of a bad harvest.

Of course, we'd have to leave an out clause, just in case we didn't have the resources. That would be a big issue in the old days, but thankfully, I was fairly sure that I was the only lawyer left in the area. Legalese is a very useful language to speak when you want to make sure no one knows what you're saying.

This was of course all just a framework, we'd have to adjust it once we got hard numbers on each settlements contribution capability and there would likely have to be even more changes once we ran it by the settlement leaders themselves.

Does all of this sound boring? Good, it should, if this sort of thing is exciting, it means that things are going horribly wrong.

It took us about three hours to get to the point we were at, and we still weren't even halfway done. We still needed to discuss local laws versus overall laws, and enforcement was going to be a mess to untangle. And that's not even getting into the necessary delay until we had the resources to actually follow through on all of these promises.

The only reason we stopped when we did was because of the Knock.

I'd been expecting it, but I wasn't looking forward to it. Still, it had to be done.

"Come in."

The door to the overseer's escape tunnel, now the main entrance to my office, slid open to reveal Preston Garvey, anger and disgust barely contained behind a mask of stoicism. His demeanor immediately putting a damper on the enjoyable atmosphere of intellectual debate that had taken over the room.

"Thank you," I looked to Sturges and Goris, "We'll meet again soon."

Seeming to sense the newfound hostility in the room, neither of them said anything, just nodded and gathered their notes. Sturges took Goris's things for him, so as not to make him reveal his claws. He'd taken the revelation of the deathclaw's true nature remarkably well, 'well, so long as you don't gut me, we'll get along just fine.'

I'd also learned another one of Goris's little idiosyncrasies. Instead of even attempting to hold a pencil or pen, he just dipped one of his claws in an inkwell and used it like a quill. It was fascinating to me how he'd managed to adapt to the necessities of human society.

Preston stood aside as the two exited, Sturges paused and shared a few words with him that I couldn't hear, but based on Preston's look of betrayal, I had to assume they were something positive about me.

The door slid closed with a slight whoosh, and for a solid minute, there was only the sound of our breathing and the scribbling of my pen. Preston took two steps towards my desk, putting him in the center of the room, but made no move to sit down. Instead he settled into a kind of parade rest and stared down his nose at me with the kind of professional irritation that only soldiers are capable of. "Mikhail said you wanted to speak."

I had to give it to him, for a moment, I could almost believe I was in a forward operating base again, being addressed by an irate Ranger captain, whose mission had been scrubbed due one of my operations. And he would have been a Ranger, I was sure of it, too good of a soldier for regular infantry, too straightforward for special forces, too proud for the Deltas, and way too idealistic for covert ops.

I didn't look up from my notes, just continued working. "How'd clearing the cabin go?"

The question seemed to knock him off balance, he'd been expecting something else. He hid it well though. "Fine, ferals are easy to take out if you know how to deal with them."

That actually piqued my curiosity, "And how is that?"

"They aren't really all that smart, all you need is a grenade or a mine and one of those old monkey noisemakers." That was actually kind of ingenious.

I shook my head though, "The ones with the cymbals, god I hate those things. They're creepy, whoever thought that was a good toy clearly had issues." I chuckled at a dark thought in my head. "He probably did a stint with Vault-tec."

Preston almost laughed too, almost, but he caught himself. "So is this why you wanted to talk, we're supposed to be all buddy-buddy now?" The venom in his voice mounted as he spoke. "You think I'll forget about this morning that easily, without even an apology? Do you honestly think I'm that stupid?"

Straight to the point then. I set down my pen, "Preston, I'm not going to apologize to you. But no I don't think you're stupid, believe it or not, I actually like you."

Preston opened his mouth, then my last words registered, throwing him off. I pressed my attack. "I admire you Preston, you have something that I've never had. You actually believe in your cause."

I stood up, drawing myself to my full height. This wasn't an intimidation tactic, even standing, Garvey had a solid seven inches on me. "I think that's why I've never gotten along all that well with regular military soldiers. My father always said that you join the military for a million reasons, but you stay because you believe in it."

Garvey wasn't saying anything, apparently content to let me give my little speech before he dismissed it. "I've never really believed in America, I've done horrible things in her name, but not because of any sense of patriotism. They pulled me out of college, I agreed to do it mainly because I was bored. I kept doing it mainly because I was good at it, and because of that, I enjoyed it."

I turned away from him to stare at a painting I'd hung on the wall, Van Gogh's Starry Night, one of my favorites. "Ming was like me, we both came from the top of our societies, and because of that, we had an intimate understanding of just how rigged the systems were in our favor. That bred an inherent cynicism. We fought for our countries because that was what let us do what we were born for."

I looked back to Preston, gauging his reaction, confused. Good, I could work with anything other than outright hostility. "Really most of my friends weren't patriots. Emma enjoyed the excitement of it all, Liam saw it as a way to get a step up in life. Mikhail actually cared about Russia, probably still does. But we all let the business itself become our passion, all except Nate."

Preston finally interrupted, "Why are you telling me all of this?"

I shrugged, and headed for the door that led towards the reactor room. "Let's take a walk."

The door whooshed open, and I kept walking, hoping he would follow me. Thank god for noisy metal floors, I could hear his footsteps behind me without having to look back. "Nate wasn't made for covert ops work, he had the intellect, he had the skill, and he had the resolve, but he didn't have heart. He was an inherently good person, something that you couldn't be if you worked for the Activity. He had a strict moral code that he lived by, don't know how he turned out that way, his childhood was hell."

We stepped into the reactor room, a replacement surge capacitor meant that there were no bolts of lightning to dodge anymore, and the skeletons and roaches had been cleared away. "Whoever recruited him made a big mistake, thinking that he could be convinced to adjust his worldview. Nothing could corrupt him, not money, not propaganda, not women. He had his code, and he stuck to it."

"Sounds like he would make a good Minuteman."

I snorted, "Yeah, he probably would. There was only one thing that swayed him, that convinced him to ignore that code, and conduct the dirty business of being a covert operative."

It was bait and he took it easily. "And what was that?"

I threw him a sidelong glance, "Me." There was a level of theatrics to all this, but I was being sincere. "He always told me that he fell in love with me the moment he laid eyes on me. I have no idea what he saw, I'm kind of a cunt in case you haven't noticed."

That actually earned me a laugh. "Yeah, I fuckin' noticed alright."

Good, Preston needed something from me, he had a pride to him that needed to be assuaged if he was going to work with me. "In any case, he loved me deeply. And it was that love that let him do what needed to be done in order to accomplish our assignments. The only problem was, I didn't feel the same way, at all."

I could almost feel the strange look Preston was giving me as we stepped out into the main corridor. "I thought he was your husband."

I nodded, "He was, after I lost Ming, I was depressed and drunk one night and went to his door. He took me into his bed and pretended it was more than it was. Then I got pregnant, so we got married, and for two years, we pretended we could make it work, I pretended I could love him."

The door at the end of the hall opened, and I led him into that room. It was the first time in the room since Nate was killed. I was expecting an emotional gut punch that didn't come. "We were both utterly miserable."

I crossed the threshold, "I suppose I was better off in a way. I had the hope that Ming might someday wake up, he knew I would never love him."

We passed by the cryopods turned coffins, out of the corner of my eye, I could see Preston's head swiveling from side to side, his eyes wide at the frigid corpses. Clearly he hadn't been in this room before, had probably avoided it on purpose. Finally we reached the pod I was looking for.

I looked up at Nate's dead and frozen face. Preston did too, realization dawning on him. "Is this…? Oh I'm really sorry."

I shook my head, he was a good man, even he couldn't be angry at a widow in front of the corpse of her dead husband. "You remind me a lot of him. I did him a disservice by pretending to be something I wasn't. I won't do the same to you. I won't apologize for what I said this morning. I won't change my tactics to suit your tastes. If you want to play at being a hero, then you should leave, and try your luck on your own."

Preston looked from Nate to me, and back again, unsure of how to respond. Yes I was using my husband's corpse as a prop, but it was for a good cause and he'd understand. "But if you want to rebuild your organization, if you want to make it better than ever before, if you want to actually help the people of the Commonwealth, then stay. You may not like my tactics, you probably won't like me any better than you do now, but work with me, and we'll make the Minutemen into the organization you always wanted it to be."

I wasn't sure if this was true, but it sounded good, and it was what he needed to hear. I extended my hand, "Do we have a deal?"

Preston looked pensive, but after a moment, he took my hand and shook it.

"Deal."

 **…**

 **And here's the second this week. I have mixed feelings about this, I'm worried that I'm making Preston seem too forgiving or making Madison difficult for you guys to enjoy as a protagonist. I'm trying to avoid playing her as a mary sue, is anyone getting that impression?**

 **We've been out of the action for a while, don't worry, we launch the reformed minutemen's first combined operation next week. I'm trying to really show how an organization like the minutemen would be formed and turned into a professional fighting force, based mostly on real life examples of US special forces training up foreign soldiers in south America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.**

 **Either way, R &R people.**

 **Next week: Operation Bloody Mary**


	13. Chapter 13

I should have expected this; the Preston problem was solved, for now. So of course a new one had to rise up and take its place.

Almost five minutes after I had wrapped things up with Preston, the head of the Abernathy clan came sprinting into Sanctuary. Apparently Ack-Ack, and by god that was a stupid name, decided to go on a little pogrom, push the local farmers around. The Abernathy's youngest, Mary, filled with all the immortal confidence only found in seventeen-year-olds, decided that she wasn't going to lay down and take it anymore. She stood up to the raiders and told them to get the hell off her family's land.

She got twenty, five millimeter, rounds through the chest for her trouble.

Yes it was brave, and yes I respect the hell out of her for trying, but why the hell couldn't she have just kept her mouth shut for one more day. Why did she have to be so stupid? I don't mean it the way it sounds, but I've seen this happen too many times before. So many lives thrown away in a moment of senseless arrogance. These aren't schoolyard bullies, they're psychopaths, the only time to stand up to them is if you can kill them, otherwise you're just going to get killed.

I can't blame her for doing what she thought was right, but I can't blame myself for not moving fast enough on the target, because as true as that may be, second guessing myself after the fact does no good for anyone.

Blake Abernathy didn't blame us either, he blamed the bitch who killed his little girl. And that was something I could work with. His terms were simple, almost exactly the same as the first set he'd offered. He'd put his family's full support behind the Minutemen, so long as we made the raiders pay, and we recovered the pendant that the raiders had taken from Mary's corpse as a trophy.

The plan was already established, and our equipment was ready, so all that was left was to brief everyone and make our move. In all honesty, it was very simple, at least from an operator's point of view. I would infiltrate the perimeter and secure the door so that those inside couldn't escape. Asher would take the canister of Lima Victor and attach it to the ventilation unit. We ran through the procedure and did a few dry rehearsals using an empty canister and a fake ventilation unit Sturges rigged up using spare parts from the vault. I was confident he'd be able to do the job. While we were doing this, Mikhail would provide overwatch and sniper support from a nearby hill.

Simple as could be.

So that's how I found myself nanosuited up and crouched in a small ditch, water up to my thighs, a few dozen yards to the west of the satellite station.

I tapped the comm button on my headset. "Radio check, Gray Wolf, in position."

Mikhail's Russian accent buzzed slightly over the comms. _"Dire Wolf, in position. I have a clear… Hold on a second."_

There was the sound of a small scuffle, a grunt, then silence. "Dire Wolf, what's your status?"

Another second, then Mikhail was back. _"Prosti, there was a visitor, he is no longer a concern. We are not compromised. I have a clear view of Blue side, three tangos visible, all are on Charlie."_

Each side had been assigned a color, blue was east, red was west, black north, and south white. Tangos were targets, Charlie was the catwalk. Yes, this was likely an unnecessary precaution, but it was good fieldcraft and it was an educational experience for Asher. "Radio check, Timber Wolf. How copy?"

 _"Good copy, this is Timber Wolf, in position with the package."_ He spoke slowly, carefully, remembering what I'd told him most likely, making sure not to break procedure.

I smiled under my mask, reminded me of my first operation. "Wolf Pack Bravo, what's your status?"

I'd separated us into two groups; Wolf Pack Alpha consisted of myself, Asher, and Mikhail. We were the primary assaulters. Wolf Pack Bravo were the secondary assaulters, if things went to plan, they wouldn't be involved until the site was secure. If things went to hell, then their job was to come in with overwhelming firepower. Bravo consisted of Preston, Sturges, and most importantly, Goris. _"Wolf Pack Bravo, in position."_

It was Preston, sarcasm evident in his tone. He found the radio procedure ridiculous, and had said so, several times. He may have agreed to work with me, but that didn't mean he liked me now.

Thankfully, only the former mattered. "Alright, all forces, operation is a go. Gray Wolf beginning infiltration."

 _"Copy, Timber Wolf beginning infiltration."_

I rose from my hide slowly, my nanosuit in stealth mode, and began my approach.

 _"Tango on Charlie curve blue side is down, two confirmed tangos still on Charlie."_ The raider on the top curve of the catwalk was dead, two were left.

I approached the gap in the fence that served as my entrance. Across the yard, I could see three splotches of red. One leaning against the door to the concrete building that housed the entrance to the bunker. Another I could glimpse through the slats of a shack they'd erected under the catwalk, lying down on an undoubtedly filthy mattress. The third, and most problematic, was sitting against the ventilation unit.

"Timber Wolf, hold position if practicable. Dire Wolf, we have a Tango on the prey, please advise."

 _"No joy Gray wolf, no joy. I am obstructed."_ No shot, the unit was in the way.

 _"Gray Wolf, This is Timber Wolf, give me a twenty on the Tango."_ He was asking for the location.

"Timber Wolf, he is sitting against the red side of the prey" Asher had a suppressed pistol, but I would prefer to keep the close quarters shots to a minimum. Our suppressors were effective, but still loud enough for someone to notice if they were paying attention.

 _"Copy Gray Wolf, I've got him."_ Cocky, but there really wasn't another option.

I decided to make my approach through the shack and eliminate the raider there. "All units be advised, one tango at point sierra, one tango at the entrance to the Burrow. Moving to eliminate tango at point sierra." Sierra was the shack; the Burrow was what we'd designated the bunker.

 _"Good copy Gray Wolf. Second tango on Charlie is down. No joy on third tango, he is in Charlie structure."_ I looked up briefly to see the corpse of one of the raiders slowly sliding down the catwalk ramp. That could be a problem.

The raider in the shack was asleep, just as I'd thought. There was a wadded up sock tossed haphazardly on the floor. I passed over the rough wooden floor like a phantom, picking up the sock as I went. The raider was flat on his back, motionless as a stone. He wasn't a large man, or small for that matter, about average. He wore no shirt, exposing a well developed musculature. His head was shaven except for a short mohawk. I drove my blade, in tanto form, up through his solar plexus, under his sternum, into his heart. His eyes shot open, revealing a set of startling brown irises. As he opened his mouth to scream, I shoved the sock in and covered it and his nose with my hand.

He thrashed in terror, but I dropped on top of him, pinning his arms to his sides with my knees. His muffled screams descended into whimpers, which descended into silence as I watched him fall from consciousness. I pulled the blade out and a gush of blood splattered across my thighs. Thank god this suit doesn't absorb liquids.

I rose slowly back to a crouch. "This is Gray Wolf, tango in sierra point is down. Timber wolf, what is the status of the prey?" I scanned the grounds and caught sight of another heat signature crouched on the side of the ventilation unit. Had to be Asher. "Disregard, Timber Wolf, I have eyes on you. You are clear to proceed."

 _"Good copy Gray wolf. Moving now."_ I zoomed in my optics as Asher leaned around the unit and slowly brought his pistol up to aim. I almost cringed at the cat-sneeze sound of the suppressed twenty two. The shot caught the raider in the ear, then came the second shot, catching the raider in the neck a few inches beneath the first impact. Double tap, just like I'd told him.

 _"Tango on the prey is down, in position and ready to sink my fangs at your convenience."_ Good, he remembered, he was only to turn on the gas after I had secured the door. Resetting my optics to normal, I moved slowly towards the raider leaning against the bunker. He turned in my direction and I froze. He swept his gaze from one side to the other, passing me over twice, then leaned back against the wall under the narrow circle of light outside the door. Letting out a small sigh of relief, I took cover behind the corner of the building.

This is what I was talking about when I said NVGs were a huge advantage. Besides that, a night watchmen should never stay close to a light, it ruins your natural night vision. I switched my blade to full katana length and picked up a small pebble, tossing it around the corner. Just as I wanted him to, the raider came to investigate. When he did, I brought my sword in a downward slice with all of my weight behind it, the exceptionally sharp blade cut straight through, severing his head, which landed with a small thump.

"Tango at the Burrow is down, moving to clear." Without hesitation, I stepped around the headless corpse, blood spurting from the neck, and moved on the door. A quick peek through the window revealed no enemies. Slipping through the doorway, I checked around the open door just to be sure, still no one. With the room clear, I moved to the entrance to the bunker.

The entrance appeared to be a simple door, but I'd seen it before. It was eight inches thick, and made of reinforced steel, with maglocks that could hermetically seal it in place if locked. The maglocks were disguised as bolts on the door frame, three on each side and two on top. Once they were activated, the only way through was to cut a hole in the door itself. And I highly doubted they had the equipment to do that.

I planted a small device on the doorframe that ran a current through the maglocks, mimicking the locking command. A second later, the maglocks were engaged and the seal was in place. "Timber Wolf, the burrow is sealed, you are clear to sink your fangs."

 _"Good Copy Gray Wolf, beginning now."_

I moved back to crouch under the window. "Dire Wolf, get ready, final tango on Charlie will reveal himself momentarily. He'll be leaving the structure through the white side."

 _"Copy that Gray Wolf, shot is ready."_

At that, I leaned out the window and let out a loud, sharp, whistle. Then darted my head back inside. A moment later came the confirmation.

 _"Tango down, all tangos on Charlie are down."_

That was it. "All units, site is clear, reconvene on the Burrow."

 **…**

 **And thus we have the first real operation of the new Minutemen. Basic special forces tactics, stealth, sniper support, and coordination. I kind of like how this played out right until the end, I feel like I kind of lost it there. I'll be honest, I'm kind of running out of steam on this one. A couple of other ideas have been popping up in my mind, but one that has really been festering is a New Vegas story about a Vegas prostitute and a courier with a 10 luck stat. Does anyone have any interest in that?**

 **Either way, one more this week to wrap up Operation Bloody Mary.**

 **R &R people.**


	14. Chapter 14

"So, is there a song we sing now?"

From my position sitting against the wall, my eyes closed, I could hear Asher. "What?"

Preston shrugged, I swear I could feel it in his voice, "I've never gassed anyone before. I don't know what the proper procedure is." He stressed the word procedure, a jab my way for insisting on radio procedure. "I assumed there was something we're supposed to be doing right now."

I didn't open my eyes, "There is a song actually." Opening one eye, I saw Preston and Asher both looking at me like I'd grown a second head. My voice stayed as deadpan as it had been, "But you have to be security level seven to learn it."

"You're joking." Preston paused, "You are joking right?"

I fought off a smirk and opened my other eye. I brought my pipboy up to check the timer I'd set. Five minutes to go. I picked up my goggles and respirator and strapped them on. If there was one thing that I didn't like about this suit, it was the number of complicated straps you had to work to get the damn mask on properly. I'd already shifted it to tank mode, which directed the nanoweave into a self-regenerating hard plate armor capable of shifting tensile strength with kinetic impacts. "Five minutes people, masks on, the gas should be dissipated by the time we go in, but no reason to take chances."

Mikhail nodded, pulling on his own mask, he'd switched his sniper rifle for his assault rifle. "Goris, you and Sturges will be able to deal with any possible reinforcements, da?"

Goris had removed his cloak, upon the revelation of his true nature, Mikhail and I had been forced to seize Preston and Asher's weapons until they had come to grips with it. Asher had taken it better than Preston, something to be said there about the adaptability of young minds. In the end, they'd both settled with it and had their weapons returned. "You have seen my kind in combat before Mister Volkov, you know the answer to your question."

Boy was that the truth, I turned to Preston and Asher, "You guys sure you want to do this, we don't need you down there." I paused and focused in on Asher, "The after effects of the gas… it won't be pretty."

Preston brushed aside my warning, "Well if we're going to do things your way, then I've got to see it for myself." He gave his musket a crank, far less effective than the cocking of a gun in my opinion, and headed for the bunker.

I looked at Asher, "You know you don't have to do this."

For a second, Asher was that same scared kid I'd comforted in my living room and I thought he'd accept my offer. Then he took a deep breath and locked it down. "No, I need to." He offered me a weak smile. "This is my new life right?"

I returned the smile, or I tried at least. It took me a second to remember my expression was hidden behind my mask. Still, I laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Yeah, come on, mask up, let's get this done."

We joined Mikhail and Preston, stacked up on the door. Mikhail took the lead position while the three of us splayed out behind him, ready to open fire if something had gone wrong and there were a dozen pissed off raiders hidden behind the door. After a perfunctory check to make sure everyone's masks were secure, the burly Russian gave a three count hand signal, on three, he pulled the device off the door frame and slowly pulled it open.

Three raiders immediately came out of the door.

But they weren't angry, or at least, they weren't any more. They were dead, and there were at least a half dozen more piled up on the steps behind them. The front three were a brutal reminder of the effects of Lima Victor. Their faces were coated in blood, as were their hands, from their damaged fingers, it appeared these three had died clawing at the door, desperate to escape.

The stair case behind them was a mess of contorted limbs and blood. The seizures had twisted the corpses to the point that many were intertwined, and it was difficult to tell where one ended and another began. All the corpses were bloody, and the blood had splattered and spread to the point that it appeared someone was halfway done painting the stairwell crimson.

"Dear god…" Preston stumbled back a step, clutching his musket like a safety blanket.

Asher stood fast, but I could see his eyes wide behind his mask, his breathing began to speed up. I stepped next to him and put my hand on the small of his back. "Slow down," I whispered, "breathe on a four count, focus on the objective, not the background."

Mikhail and I had seen this all before. It was still a gruesome sight, but unfortunately, we can both say that we've seen worse. Mikhail kicked the corpses aside, clearing a path down the stairs as he went. To my surprise, and pride, Asher was on his heels. I threw Preston a look and made after them. The Minuteman came last, perhaps unwilling to let his pride be scratched yet again.

At the bottom of the stairs Mikhail held up a hand, stop. He dropped to a knee, examining something, then looked up. "Laser tripwire, they must have forgotten about it when they were trying to escape."

He motioned to move forward and disappeared into the lobby of the listening post, followed by Asher and the rest of us. As I passed, I saw what Mikhail was talking about. Someone had jury rigged a couple of microfusion cells and piece of a transformer to make a trap. A cunning little piece of work, but all it had done is add a few burns to the dying as they'd attempted their escape.

The lobby was little better, one of the wiser raiders sat against a far wall, his brains painting the wall behind him, a ten millimeter pistol in his hand. Another had apparently clawed his eyes out as he died. Yet another had performed a kind of amateur seppuku before the seizures set in, most likely one of the latter ones the gas had hit, attempting to avoid the fate of his friends. He'd botched the job though and had only managed to spread his innards around the floor once his nervous system betrayed him.

I could go on, but the gist of it is there. It's amazing how many unique positions and ways to die that men can find in fifteen minutes. I've seen sights just like this well over twenty or thirty times, and each time there are a few truly unique examples.

In the old days, before the war, many considered nuclear weapons to be the worst weapon ever developed by mankind. Myself and anyone who'd seen chemical weapons in action would disagree with this. Nukes are the most destructive, but nothing can compare in terms of actual suffering to that caused by chemical warfare.

The intel room was thankfully clear of corpses, though it was also clear of intel. All of the documents had been used either as kindling or for other less mentionable reasons. A bit of a shame, but if the databases were functional, not a problem. The upside was that the Raiders had stored their loot there, more ammo, a few more guns, we were developing quite a stockpile at this point. Not to mention, they had one of those old covert operations training manuals, Tiptoe through the Tulips. Walter always did have a sense of humor to him.

Following procedure, we would sweep the place floor by floor, and room by room. It seemed like the gas had hit the large central chamber first, explained why there were so many suicides. The gas would have taken time to spread, given them time to notice, to try and escape, one way or the other. Those that chose the other were the only ones to achieve any success.

The lobby split off at a T, separating into two hallways. I signaled right to Mikhail, who nodded. "Preston your with Mikhail. Asher, stick with me."

Preston grunted a response, but followed Mikhail. Asher kept two steps behind me. "So," Asher asked, his voice low, "How important is the stuff down here? That's why we really had to gas them right, so the tech doesn't get broken."

"Clever boy," I scanned a bathroom, empty. "Before the war, we had a couple of dozen contingencies to help rebuild if shit went all to hell. If even a few are still functional, we get a big advantage. If a few specific contingencies are still functional, then anyone who stands against us will be dust before they can bring their arms to bear."

I could almost hear his eyebrows going up. "That powerful huh?"

The image of the ruins of Pyongyang after orbital bombardment flashed in my head. "Yeah, that powerful."

We stepped out on the catwalk, there was another corpse hanging on the railing. "And if none of them work?"

Considering all the options, good. "Assuming none of them work, then we still have the satellite network for support."

There were surprisingly few bodies in this room, the majority had been trying to escape. "You mentioned that before, what do you mean by that?"

I had to think for a moment on that, how do you explain satellite support to someone who didn't understand how satellites worked. The specific workings could be explained later, "Basically, once we get the network online, we can get a bird's eye view of anything we want, and just as importantly, we can communicate with anyone who has the proper hardware."

The catwalk was clear, we began moving down the ramp to clear the central chamber and link up with the others. "So basically, if Jared sends a bunch of guys after us, if we have these satellites, we'll know about it the second they leave."

I held up a hand, one of the corpses at the bottom of the ramp was still shaking. I drove my sword through his back and twisted, then he went still. With a flick of the wrist, I cleared the blood of my blade. "And send someone to ambush them, yes, that's the idea."

There was less of a pause than I expected before Asher spoke again. Good, he was assimilating. "Sounds useful."

There was the telltale sound of a laser blast. Preston was putting another target out of their misery. "Very," Mikhail and Preston came in through the opposite side of the room, "Our side's clear, you?"

"Da, everything but the maintenance area. The door is locked." Note to self, make Mikhail practice lockpicking. The internal doors here weren't that tough.

Still, the maintenance area wasn't that large and it had multiple air vents to deal with the fumes from the soldering irons. That area had probably gotten a more intense dose of Lima Victor than anywhere else, "We can clear it later, cover me while I get to work on the terminal."

The guys fanned out behind me while I pulled the seat up to the desk and got to work.

 **Authorization Code: MAYINDIANOVEMBERGOLF ECHOTANGOECHOROMEONOVEMBERALPHALIMA**

Yes, it's long, and yes, it's sappy, deal with it.

 **Authorization Code: ACCEPTED**

 **Welcome: Whisper**

 **Clearance Level: BLACK-10**

 **Command Authority: GRANTED UNDER ORDER MX-CN91**

"What is all that?" Asher was leaning over my shoulder.

"Whisper is my old callsign, Black-10 refers to my security clearance, I'm one of ten people cleared for any and all programs under ISA purview, which is essentially all of them." Technically, just telling him that was high treason, but that didn't worry me, the inspector-general wasn't cleared to know who held Black-10 clearance. And he's most likely been dead for two hundred and ten years, so there was that.

"And the last bit?"

"MX-CN91 is the final emergency response plan implemented in the event of a full nuclear exchange with an expectation of a full decapitation strike and a complete collapse of the majority of global infrastructure. The important thing right now is that it grants command authority to those with Black-10 clearance, meaning I have authority over all remaining government systems." Which probably didn't amount to much.

"Hey," Preston cast us an irritated look, "Can you guys geek out over the old-world bullshit later and just get the job done."

"You need to start enjoying your work man," Asher said.

Preston grunted, I held back a snort. I knew I liked this kid for a reason.

 **USAF SATELLITE STATION OLIVIA**

 **Satellite Status: Safe Mode**

 **Data Stream Status: Safe Mode**

 **Database Status: Safe Mode**

 **ISA Network Status: Safe Mode**

 **Protocol 17 currently in place**

 **Under Protocol 17, any and all military and government systems are to be locked in safe mode until unlocked by official with the appropriate clearance. For information regarding appropriate clearance, please consult your direct superior**

 **Black-10 Authority Recognized: Unlock Protocol 17**

 **Y/N?**

"Jackpot," I muttered as I tapped the key.

 **Y**

That's when the shooting started. I felt something strike me from behind.

And then I felt the blood.

 **…**

 **Yes, cliffhanger this week. I'm somewhat evil like that.**

 **The contingencies are in part going to be my way for explaining certain aspects that aren't in-game, mods, creative changes, that sort of thing. And some things that are in game, they just don't make much sense. And of course, so that I can make it a bit closer to our world, as satellite support is absolutely crucial in modern special operations.**

 **Oh yeah, and before anyone points out that satellites aren't likely to still be functional after two hundred years of no maintenance or use, looking at you Justin my space geek friend, I point out the Archimedes system from NV, Bradley-Hercules and Highwater-Trousers from FO3, and the B.O.M.B. stations from the cancelled van buren game. Apparently, the pre-war fallout nations knew how to build a hell of a satellite.**

 **BTW, I'm pretty busy with my transfer, so I'll probably only manage one chapter a week for a while.**

 **R &R people.**


	15. Chapter 15

I have blood in my mouth.

It coats my tongue, my teeth, warm and salty, with a tang like iron, like seawater stewed in an oil drum.

It's not my own.

I pull my teeth out of the man's neck, slowly breaking the seal between my lips and his skin. He's trembling, I'm not.

I spit the blood out, not abruptly in his face as he'd expect, but slowly, pushing mix of blood and saliva out over my tongue as I bring it up the side of his face. He doesn't understand this, this wasn't in his training.

He doesn't know what I'm going to do to him, he doesn't know why I chose him out of all the possible candidates.

He does know what I want. "Tā zài nǎ?"

My voice is a whisper in his ear, my words are soft, like the caress of a lover, just as soft as the hand that trails down his arm in just the same way his wife does when he's comes home for the day.

"Wǒ jiào zhāng dé, shì zhōnghuá rénmín gònghéguó jūnduì zhǎng." I pull away from him, leaving my hand where it is. He thinks he can fight me, he's trying to hold out, he doesn't want to betray his country, but he doesn't know how far he can go.

I will show him that however far that is, I will go farther.

I offer him a small smile, a amused mother gently chiding a recalcitrant child. "Xiànzài, dé, wǒ zhīdào nǐ de míngzì, nǐ zhīdào wǒ xiǎng yào shénme."

I cup his cheek with one hand and stroke his arm with the other, raking my claws along his skin, leaving centimeter deep wounds up and down his arms. "Zhǐyào gěi wǒ wǒ xiǎng yào de, bùyào zài tuī zhègele."

He grits his teeth, the wounds are small, each one insignificant in itself, but at this point, there were hundreds of them. Parts of his arm were now shredded down to the bone.

Lingchi was a horrible way to die, he knew it, I knew it, yet still he resisted. "Wǒ jiào zhāng dé, shì zhōnghuá rénmín gònghéguó jūnduì zhǎng."

I click my tongue in disappointment, sliding off the man's lap and shaking my head like a disappointed school teacher with a failing pupil. "Wǒ bùxiǎng zhèyàng zuò, dàn xiànzài nǐ qiǎngpò wǒ de shǒu."

This scenario was carefully designed to keep him off balance, tapping into firmly ingrained memories and confronting him with strange and terrifying new threats, hitting him with the familiar and the alien in equal measure. That has not been enough to break the captain, thus it was time to play my ace.

From a hidden pocket, I produce a set of photos, I hold one up to his face. This one depicts an older woman in a drab green Mao suit. "Nǐ de qīzi liú zài jiāzhōng, shì xià yī bō hōngzhà de zhòng zhōng zhī zhòng."

It struck something in him, I could see it in his eyes, but it wasn't enough. I held up a second picture, this one of a pretty young woman a few years younger than myself in a flattering cheongsam. "Wǒmen yào jiāohuàn nǐ de nǚ zhǔrén, háishì yào yòng zǐdàn cuīhuǐ nàgè piàoliang de liǎn."

He closed his eyes and tried to look away, but I grabbed him by the chin and forced him to face me again. "Wǒ hái méiyǒu wánchéng ài."

I hold up the final photo, a beautiful little three-year-old girl beaming at the camera without a care in the world. "Zhè yīgè... Zhège tài guìle, bùnéng kuàisù zuò."

He looks at me, shock and horror dawning in his eyes. I smile, as wide as the little girl's and as devilish as hers was innocent. "Shénme? Nǐ yǐwéi wǒmen bù zhīdào? Wǒmen jiāng dàizhe tā, jiù xiàng wǒmen dài nǐ yīyàng."

Suddenly the smile dropped and I seized his jugular, the tips of the claws barely piercing his throat. "Nǐ huì gàosù wǒ wǒ xiǎng zhīdào shénme, huòzhě wǒ huì qiǎngpò nǐ zài nǐ de xiǎo tiānshǐ de yǎnjīng lǐ kàn wǒ, ér wǒ de yǎnjīng."

That was it, that was as far as he could go, any level of resistance he had remaining crumbled before the threat and the knowledge that I could and would back it up. I knew he would. A father will do anything to protect his little girl, even betray his country if necessary. After all, mine had.

After he had broken down, after he had given me every bit of information that I needed, I turned and stepped out of the room. I removed the set of metal teeth from my mouth, they were quite similar to a set of costume vampire teeth, only more fitted to my teeth and far sharper. Then I went through the process of rinsing my mouth out, both to make sure that all the man's blood was gone and to clear the compound that covered my tongue and made sure I didn't contract anything from the blood. Then I removed the fake nails, another little work up from R&D on request.

After I had finished getting out of the costume, I picked up the phone and dialed the number I'd memorized what felt like a lifetime ago.

"Mikhail, I found her."

In a blink, I wasn't at FOB Knockout in the Jiangsu province anymore.

I'm in a bunker complex, surrounded on all sides by thick walls of smooth concrete.

And I'm running.

I've been in the suit too long, I can feel it. Muscles tearing, bones fracturing, veins and arteries straining to pump blood to keep up with my movements, nervous system overworked, I could almost smell the neurons of my overclocked brain burning.

The machine gun fire striking me feels like so many mosquito bites, barely noticeable. The men with the guns are screaming at me. Yaomo, strange demon, that's what they're calling me.

They fear me, they should.

Normally I would enjoy that, I would revel in the terror they felt towards me, but not tonight.

Tonight, I don't want their fear.

Tonight, there's only one thing that I want.

And they're in my way.

Before they know what's happening, I'm on them.

The first one tried to fight, tries to jam the bayonet of his rifle into my gut. I grab him by the elbow and with a flick of my wrist wrench it to an unnatural angle. The imitation Kalashnikov went flying as the man started screaming. With a hard kick, I broke his shin bone, when he dropped, my foot came down on his head with a wet crunch.

The second one stared at me in shock, I rewarded him by driving my fist through his face, caving his skull in around it. He collapsed back against the wall, falling into a slump as his body caught up with the death of his brain.

The third one was the smartest, he tried to run. If he were smart enough, he never would have accepted this assignment. I throw myself at him, slamming into him with all the force of a flatbed truck at forty miles an hour. I planted my knees in the man's back and clamped my hands around his head, wrenching it away and chucking the severed head down hallway.

All of this happens in the span of ten seconds.

The visceral display has convinced their comrades that their political officers are less of a threat than I am. They've turned tail and disappeared in any direction they could find. My path is clear and I continue through the facility unmolested. It won't last though, as I move I'm more than aware that the political officers are executing the most senior of those in flight in order to coerce their subordinates to attempt a second attack. It will work, but it will take time.

Time they do not have.

My goal is right in front of me, sealed behind a six-inch hermetically sealed steel door that makes a sound like a mix of a car crash and a giant soda can opening when I tear it off its hinges.

There she is, after a month of hell, I've found her.

She'd beautiful, even in this horrible place. Even as she lays naked, bound to some strange cross between medieval rack and an electric chair. Even with the IVs and tubes stabbing her and dozens of fresh wounds all over her body. Even with her face half hidden behind the bastard child of a breathing mask and a force feeder.

Off to the side, in front of a bank of computers, stands a tall spindly man sporting a Fu Manchu with the bearing of a cat and the collar of a PLA colonel commandant. When he saw me, he showed none of the panic of his underlings, He merely turned with a feline grace, threw a switch and punched a button.

An electric current suddenly ran through the strange contraption and Ming began to scream, muffled by the mask but still a shard of glass through my heart.

In the blink of an eye, I'm across the room, an iron grip around Fu Manchu's neck. I threw the switch back and punched the same button I'd seen him push, nothing happens.

"How do I disable the machine?" I half scream through gritted teeth as I slam him against the nearest wall.

Somehow, the colonel is serene. His expression is the same as a grandmaster playing a game of Go, and winning. "I'm afraid you simply can't."

Unable to think of another option, I take the direct approach, putting my fist through the electronics multiple times. By some miracle, it works, the voltage cuts out and I drop the tormentor in a heap and lunge for the machine, tearing off the mask, touching my fingers to her neck.

Thank god, a pulse, weak but steady.

"Ming," My voice is a whimper, barely held back from devolving into a sob.

But her lips don't move, her eyes don't open, she just lays there, limp in the restraints.

Behind me, I hear the man begin to laugh, and I turn to him, hate burning in my eyes.

He only laughs harder, descending into a full on cackle ringing through the small room.

The cackling never stops, even as I rend the bastard limb from limb.

I blink and again the world changes, I'm not in the suit, and it's deathly cold.

I'm back in the cryopod, watching as the two scientists and the merc open Nate's pod.

I know what's coming, just like last time, I start pounding and kicking on the door, as I had the first time.

I knew it was worthless but I had to do something.

Just as before, when the hazmat suited woman tried to take Shaun, Nate resisted, and just as before, the merc raised his pistol. This time, I couldn't watch.

"Really Madison, the lad's expendable, so why the histrionics?"

I opened my eyes to find an unwelcome surprise staring at me from the other side of the glass.

My eyes burned, I was in no mood for this . "Get out of my head Charlie."

His expression of bored distaste didn't shift one bit. "Gladly, now will you drag yourself out of this somniumatic pity party and wake up so that we can speak like professionals?"

The next thing I know, I'm blinking the sleep out of my eyes.

We're in the vault, in the little area that used to serve as a security station. We'd moved the lockers and filing cabinets, along with the desk, and replaced it with an AutoDoc Mark X that had been stored in Mikhail's bunker. He had gotten a larger one than mine, and thus by mutual agreement, my bunker stored most of our mementos and smaller items while his held the big ticket items.

We'd put the AutoDoc where the desk used to be, I was sitting in a folding chair in the opposite corner.

And He is leaning against the wall in between us, a cup in each hand.

He looks the same as the day I met him two hundred and twenty years ago. Two parts Sean Connery's James Bond, one part H.P. Lovecraft, with just a dash of Nikola Tesla's mad genious in the eyes. His suit is black and immaculate, as always. His face is a mask of disinterest in the world around him, a good sign, if he's smiling then someone's about to die in a horrible and ironic way.

Charles Thoureau Louis, Charlie only to his friends and those who wanted an aforementioned horrible and ironic death. Chief field operative in the most dangerous department in the sea of dangerous departments that global covert operations encompassed. He was an expert in covert operations, history, mathematics, and a slough of other arcane areas of knowledge. Not surprising considering that he'd ran with the likes of Colin Gubbins and Lawrence Grand.

He was also a gentleman, in loose terms, that I tried my damndest to avoid. "What the hell are you doing here Charlie?"

He offered me one of the teacups, I didn't know what it was, but it was hot and caffeinated, so I took it. "You shouldn't blame yourself for the lad, he wanted to be a professional. This sort of thing happens to professionals."

His accent is English refined pronunciation with a background of something celtic. "Still, all the signs were there, it could have been prevented."

He shook his head, "Damn your eyes girl." He was silent for a moment, "I'm sorry about Nate, was a fine man, just not strong enough to make the calls that had to be made. He deserved better than a bullet in a bunker."

I took a sip, English breakfast tea, another of the affectations from Charlie's appropriated homeland. "Drop the sympathy act Charlie, it's not a good look for you. You're here on business, you know it and so do I. My side of the house is fucked, what's your side looking like?"

He took a sip of his own tea. "Quiet, but more difficult to keep a handle on. CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN came and went after your kind sent the world tits up."

I looked up at him seriously, "Charlie, if the end of the world was some Hawk's idea to avoid GREEN, then you and I are going to have a problem."

He raised an eyebrow, not many people threatened him and lived more than a few seconds. "No, not as far as I know. Though it could have been the result of a CASE NIGHTMARE RED that was recently repulsed."

That got my attention, "How did humanity repulse a RED in its current state? Our projections were that we'd be toast even at peak military strength."

"Not humanity as such," He held up his index finger, "One human for the most part, just finally abducted the wrong one. Got out of their custody and wreaked havok aboard their ship. You should be seeing one of the results of that engagement rather soon."

My brow furrowed in irritation, cryptic old bastard. "What about BLUE HADES?"

Charlie shrugged his shoulders, "What about them? They're still going about their business, if anything, they care even less about humanity now than they did before. Though the treaties still hold."

Well, I suppose it was optimistic to hope the Great Old Ones might get off their watery asses and lend a hand for once in their miserable immortal lives. "And DEEP SEVEN?"

He stirred his tea with a tiny spoon that just seemed to appear in his hand. "That is what has been keeping me busy these past few years. We've had three near breaches on the east coast in the past decade alone, and lacking the global network we had before the War, I can't guarantee that one hasn't fully emerged somewhere and has gone to ground since. Without the old systems, I'm stretched pretty well thin."

Great, so not only did humanity nuke themselves back to the stone age, but the horrors of the earth's interior and the outer realms were still getting uppity and needed people to stop them. "You hold sway with BLUE HADES, any chance you could use that to make an argument for them to help us rebuild civilization."

Charlie paused for a moment, thinking the proposal over. "Perhaps, it hasn't worked before, but the fact that someone they know is back in play might help convince them."

"Or you could just pop back home and pick up a few pieces of hyper advanced tech." I was only half joking.

He stared at me with an utter deadpan. "The day I go back to the city is the day it rises, not before, and we both want to put that off for as long as possible." He pulled a silver pocket watch out of his suit jacket. "I'm afraid my time is up, I just wanted to check in and apprise you of recent developments. I will contact you if you need to be contacted."

I nodded in response and he turned and stepped out of the room. I already knew that no one would see him leave.

Ours was a strange friendship, as befitted strange friends.

In any case, I looked at the AutoDoc, it was time to move on to more immediate matters. I pulled my personal terminal from my bag, which was leaning against my chair, and opened it. Booting it up and beginning to type.

 **REPORT DESIGNATION: AFTER ACTION MISSION REPORT, Operation Bloody Mary**

 **Commanding Officer: Madison Victory**

 **Secondary: Mikhail Volkov**

 **Authority: ISA Remnant Operating Under MX-CN91**

 **Operational Protocol: Clear & Hold**

 **Preface: In the case of this report being reviewed at some future point, this report will be informal, as will all future reports until such a time that an official format has been developed and standardized.**

 **On Octobet 24, 2287, the location, formerly known as United States Air Force Satellite Station Olivia, henceforth referred to as Echo Site, was identified as a priority target along with others by subject Asher. The site would be reconned that evening by Col. Mikhail Volkov. Reconnaisance showed that the site was occupied by hostile forces, colloquially known as raiders, corroborating the intelligence provided by Asher. This, along with the discovery that the satellite connection was still functional and the likely amount of salvagable communication and computer equiipment, made Echo Site a Nexus Target, that is, a target of the highest priority in order to fulfill the securing of the region. Preparations were initiated for the seizure of the site.**

 **On the afternoon of October 25, 2287, the hostile element launched a raid on the nearby settlement, Abernathy Farm, a civillian attempted to confront the hostiles and was gunned down by the hostile leader. This led to the expediting of the operational timetable. That evening the assault was planned. Our forces were divided into two elements, Wolf Pack Alpha, consisting of myself, callsign Gray Wolf, Mikhail, callsign Dire Wolf, and Asher, callsign Timber Wolf, acting as the primary assault force, and Wolf Pack Bravo, consisting of Preston Garvey, Goris, and Sturges, acting as the secondary assault force. Wolf Pack Alpha would separate into three individual elements. Dire Wolf was to provide overwatch and sniper support from a nearby elevated position east of the site. Gray Wolf, myself, was to infiltrate the Site from the west and secure the entrance to the bunker, known as the Burrow. Timber Wolf was to infiltrate the site from the east and secure the ventilation unit, known as the prey, and introduce a chemical agent, known as Lima Victor, into the ventillation sysetem of the bunker. The chemical agent would be pumped into the bunker, eliminating all hostiles within, after which, Wolf Packs Alpha and Bravo would rendesvous at the Burrow and a team would be deployed to clear the bunker. If at any point an element of Wolf Pack Alpha was discovered, Wolf Pack Bravo would provide emergency cover and commence a full assault with the hope of securing the Burrow before the enemy could block it.**

 **The first half of the operation went exactly according to the plan, Wolf Pack Alpha was able to secure the Burrow and introduce Lima Victor into the ventillation system without breaking stealth. Wolf Pack Bravo rendesvoused with us at the signal, after which we waited for Lima Victor to do its work. It is at this time that I would like to note that a more suitable chemical agent would have been pure nitrogen gas, as we held abundant reserves and asphyxiation rather than poison may have prevented the later problems.**

 **Goris and Sturges were left on the surface as a rear guard, I led the remaining men into the bunker. Immediately on insertion, we discovered a large number of enemy dead. Lima Victor's potency, along with the psychological effects of the sight of someone suffering its effects, lead to an attempted, and failed, evacuation. Thus the majority of hostiles died in the exit stairwell and the lobby. Upon clearing the stairwell, we secured the lobby. Let it be noted that the terminal in the lobby was later shown to contain data that could have prevented the problems in the latter part of the mission. It is my reccomendation that during future clearing operations, when time and other situational factors do not prohibit it, terminals be hacked and their contents be reviewed as they are encountered.**

 **After clearing the lobby and the siderooms therein, our team split into two groups to clear the two hallways that emerged from the lobby. Mikhail and Preston took the stairs and cleared the lower siderooms while Asher and I took the upper siderooms and the catwalk. Both of which proved to be clear of survivors. It is here that I must make absolutely clear that I take full responsibility for what happened to Asher, though the maintenance room fell under Mikhail's responsibility, it was my decision to secure the primary objective, the satellite control terminal, before clearing the final room.**

 **Though we were successful in securing the primary objective, the immense strategic value of which cannot be understated, and were able to activate a number of contingencies that cannot be elaborated on in this report, what happened next was utterly preventable. As I was logging into the network, the leader of the hostile element, known as 'Ack-Ack,' burst out of the maintenance area with her minigun blasting. It was later discovered that the maintenance area, before the nuclear exchange that comprised the Great War of 2077, was slated for fumigation, thus all ventillation shafts had been sealed beforehand. This meant that Ack-Ack was able to lock herself in the maintenance area and wait for the Lima Victor to dissipate. While Ack-Ack was put down within five seconds of her appearance, she was able to fire anywhere between twenty and thirty rounds, five of which struck Asher in the back.**

 **While his injuries were severe, we were able to stabilize him. However, two of these rounds struck his spinal column, doing a great deal of damage and leaving him comatose. It is for this reason and the potential that Asher has already shown that after returning to base, henceforth known as Sanctuary, we proceeded with surgery to outfit him with a standard ISA tactical cybernetic rig. Once again, I take full responsibility for his injuries.**

 **It is also my full reccomendation that, once again, barring any situation necessities such as time factors, in future operations, areas be fully cleared before moving on the objective. As there was no time factor on this operation, I have nothing to justify my decision other than faulty intelligence and my own impatience. Despite this mistake, the low casualty rate and the strategic benefits gained lead me to consider this operation a success.**

 **Signature**

 **Madison W. Victory**

 **…**

 **Hey guys, ok, multiple things on this chapter.**

 **First, I know that the chinese parts are annoying, but there's some really spoilery stuff there if you feel like working out the translation.**

 **Second, I'm not sure if I'm going to want to do more of these after action reports, they're a bit tedious to write, what do you guys think reading it.**

 **And thirdly, to those of you who get what this chapter was referencing, I love that book series, I just got into it, and it is awesome. Don't worry though, I'm not totally going down that road, just keeping my options open in case I want to delve into some of the lovecraftian horror that Fallout is sprinkled with.**

 **Only one chapter this week.**

 **R &R people**


	16. Chapter 16

Mikhail came to check up on me just as I was finishing my report. At the sight of my PT, he smirked and shook his head. "Always a stickler for protocol, eh Volchitse. It is the end of the world, yet still you write a report."

"It's a good habit to keep, and a necessary one if you we're going to be nation building. Any good combat force needs administration; bureaucracy is a necessary evil." A thought struck me, "Why weren't Preston and Asher in tactical gear?"

That gave Mikhail pause, he brought his hand up and scratched at the stubble that now covered his jaw. "I can't really think of a reason, the thought didn't occur to me at the time that they'd need it."

I turned back to my terminal and started typing again. "I didn't think of it either. We have the materiel, there's no reason we shouldn't have used it. If we had, Asher wouldn't have been wounded nearly as badly. I'm adding that to the report." I looked back up at the Spetsnaz operator, "We made a lot of mistakes on this one."

Mikhail shrugged, "I won't disagree, but we're never short on things we can do better next time. We're both used to working with professionals. It's been a long time since we dealt with amateurs, and in our day, even amateurs knew to ask us for tactical gear if it was available."

I looked at the AutoDoc and offered a noncommittal "Hmmm."

Mikhail leaned against the wall. "More importantly, we'd gotten used to doing the heavy lifting ourselves, this was the first time we brought the locals along for the ride since we pulled them out in Concord. It was bound to be something of a clusterfuck, and all in all, I'd call it a pretty successful clustefuck. You and I weren't wounded, Preston only took a scratch from where one of the bullets winged him, and the kid was going to have to have the surgery eventually if he was going to be Vympel. Not to mention the strategic gains."

I closed my PT and set it aside. He was right, my emotions didn't want to admit it, but he was. "Alright, speaking of those gains, you've been through the system, what did we get?"

In the rush to get Asher stabilized, I hadn't had a chance to go through the network. Mikhail had taken Sturges and Preston back to survey and salvage. "The bad news first, all of the best toys are unavailable. The TOSS system was used up during the initial conflict, Archimedes I and II are both slaved over the Mojave desert. II seems to have been pretty active for the past few years according to telemetry." The Russian snorted, "Someone's been having fun with their toy."

So someone out west had orbital strike capabilities, one of these days I was really going have to schedule a trip to Vegas. Still, more pressing issues. "What about Bradley-Hercules, Highwater-Trousers?"

Mikhail shook his head, "Nope, but those two are a touch more interesting, HT was activated as a self defense measure, and Bradley-Hercules was used twice." He stopped speaking for a full minute.

I arched an eyebrow, realizing he was pausing for drama. "And I'm sensing a but…"

I'm always amazed at how the huge Russian can be so stoic and still have all the showmanship of a ten year old with a dirty magazine. He nodded, "But, and this is where it is interesting, Bradley-Hercules was used twice, but not for the Great War, same for HT, its payload was expended ten years ago. Half on a satellite array just outside of DC, half on Adams Air Force Base."

Adams Air Force Base, famous home base for Air Force One. Goris had mentioned a conflict between the Brotherhood of Steel faction he mentioned and the Enclave. Considering their pretentions, it made complete sense for those pricks to claim that place as their own. I'd have to ask about that later. "Alright, what about the more mundane stuff? The caches, the FORGOTTEN ARMY protocol, that sort of thing."

Miikhail's pragmatic stoicism was back now that the fun topic was done. "The satellite network is fully functional, we have full coverage over the Commonwealth. We can get more, but I don't want to stretch the system until we need it. We're getting signals from power armor all over the Commonwealth, the same goes for the caches."

All power armor suits had a transponder built in that could be activated if the suit had been inactive for more than seventy two hours. The caches were a number of airtight shipping containers buried around the country. Each held either a stockpile of materiel. "I agree, what about FORGOTTEN ARMY, we can probably salvage a lot of equipment from whatever bunkers they hid those guys away in."

There was something odd in his expression, he knew something I didn't. "What exactly do you know about FORGOTTEN ARMY?"

Once again, that was rather odd. "The basic outline mostly, I ran the viability assessment. Slip expendable soldiers with useful skills out of the regular armed forces, wipe the records, and hide them in black sites around the country, in the event of a foreign invasion, an insurgency, or a limited nuclear exchange, you have a readymade and unexpected army to form an insurgency, take down an insurgency, or stabilize the nation, respectively. It was essentially a small scale, short term, clandestine version of Project Safehouse. It was a decent idea from a continuity of government standpoint, so I signed off on it."

"They didn't mention anything about turning them into ghouls?"

I won't lie, that knocked me off guard. "They did what now?"

The Russian dug around in his pocket for his cigarettes, elaborating as he did. "Apparently DARPA had been running experiments, they'd gotten it up to a seventeen percent success rate by the time they ran FORGOTTEN ARMY."

Seventeen percent success rate, two thousand troops were put into that program. Fucking DARPA. "So we're talking about roughly three hundred and forty survivors, probably a lot less at this point."

Mikhail finally found the pack, "Ten actually, at least in the Commonwealth. Apparently there were thirty hidden in the Notch up in Hadley when the bombs dropped. Three went out that day and never came back, seventeen drifted away and left the Commonwealth over the past two centuries, Two are at a ghoul settlement to the east, three are with a mercenary group called the gunners, one is in Goodneighbor, and another four are working as caravan guards, well, three now."

I snatched one of the cigarettes without asking. "And you got this information where?"

He threw me a wolfish grin before offering me a light. "From Marine Gunnery Seargeant Benjamin Warus, the newest addition to our merry band of svolochi. He turned up on the bridge an hour ago."

I took a deep drag of the cigarette, where had I heard that name before. "You wanted to handle the debriefing before telling me."

He lit up his own, speaking around the cigarette, "exactly. I had to make sure that this guy was real, he had the chip, knew the code word, and passed every test I threw at him. The man is a marine."

If my memory was right, and it almost always is, the chip was a simple little device, surgically implanted in each FA soldier's shoulder, its only purpose was to receive a single signal that served as an activation message. Considering the attrition rate, it suddenly made a lot more sense why they didn't go for something more expensive and complicated. "I'll talk to him and review the contingencies myself once I get the chance. After that though, we're getting together to hammer out a basic operational doctrine."

"Shtraf, Shtraf Volchitse, you and your paperwork." Despite the aggravation in his voice, there was amusement in his eyes. He let out a ring of smoke, "Sturges is really stepping up, he raided your candy stash and has Rebecca's son scavenging the neighborhood for odds and ends he can use. He's taking the spare parts from Olivia to cobble together some extra handheld sat radios. And he keeps disappearing off to work on that secret project of his. I don't think he sleeps."

The extra handhelds would be useful, with the network active, our sat phones would work, but we only had a few of those. "Keep an eye on him, he's a good asset and I like the enthusiasm, but I don't want him burning himself out."

He crushed his cigarette against the wall, leaving a black mark and earning a glare from me, eliciting a chuckle from him. "Are you going to wait until after Asher gets out to talk to Ben?"

I nodded, "Probably, why?"

"One of the suits is at the old robot dump, I'm going to take a salvaging team over there and I was planning on having Ben join us."

I waved a dismissive hand, "Go ahead, he's still going to be in surgery for another four hours. Meeting Sergeant Warus isn't an urgent priority."

He nodded, but lingered in the doorway. "You really should get out of this hole Madison, the caravan Ben was with is in town, it could be a solid source for intel."

I looked at him, I didn't want to leave in case something happened with the surgery, highly unlikely with these later models, but not unheard of. Still, Mikhail had a point, the caravan could be useful. "Fine, let's go."

He clapped me on the back and smirked, "Good, by the way, where did you get that tea cup next to your chair?"

Now was my turn to smirk, "You're not cleared for that."

 **…**

 **Okay, this one was the last chapter tying up the odds and ends of Operation Bloody Mary. The only real purpose of this was to elaborate on the contingencies from the satellite network, I might add a few more as the story goes on that are unavailable now for various reasons, but these are the only ones for now.**

 **I'm really trying to keep on this, I really am, but that Fallout New Vegas Story is calling to me.**

 **Also, while I'm at this, all of you, go check out eaglescorch's "The Lies We Tell Ourselves." If you aren's familiar with eaglescorch's work, he is, in my opinion, one of the best writers on the Archive. If you take anything away from this chapter, let it be checking that out.**

 **Okay, R &R people.**


	17. Chapter 17

I don't think that I'll ever really get used to the glare coming out of the vault. Even after the seventh or eighth time coming out, it still hit me. The outside of the entrance had transformed somewhat, Sturges had been working round the clock, taking every spare minute to strip the rusting hulks that surrounded the elevator. Apparently part of his secret project, at some point, he was going to have to tell me exactly what that project he kept disappearing off to work on was.

Still, we followed the same trail that we always did down to the neighborhood, tracks were starting to wear a groove into the ground, boot prints occasionally interrupted by the huge raptor claw prints Goris left, and long drag marks from where Sturges and others had pulled some of the larger pieces of salvage. From the elevated position, it was clear that the neighborhood was slowly changing too, the most obvious differences being that two of the collapsed houses had been entirely cleared away and the roofs of all the houses that were currently inhabited had been patched with the spare materials. Many of the dead trees had been brought down as well. Somewhat surprisingly, the huge oak in the center of the cul-de-sac had been left untouched.

Walking past my old house, I noticed that Codsworth had been hard at work, all of the holes in the roof had been patched and most of the holes in the outside walls had too. His construction subroutines were really paying off. That reminded me, I would have to check my bunker and see if I still had the mod kit he came with, it might speed up the rebuilding process.

Just as we passed, we were waylaid by the robot himself. "Ma'am, it's delightful to see you out and about. Tell me, how did your excursion go last night? Mister Garvey mentioned that young master Asher was injured. I do hope it's not too severe."

I wondered if Codsworth actually cared about Asher or if it was just because I'd mentioned that he was valuable to me. Still, I smiled at the fragment of my old life. "He'll be fine Codsworth, he's in surgery now, but he'll be fine."

If the butler had teeth he would have been smiling. Instead he just switched back to the cheerful tone that was his default setting. "Right you are ma'am, I'm sure the lad will be right as rain in no time." Then his eyestalks dipped again and his voice module switched to contrition. "I do apologize for not having the repairs to the house done yet ma'am, but Mister Sturges keeps requiring aid in his projects, and Miss Rebecca has been asking me to help her renovate the DiPietro residence, or rather her new residence, and-well there's just so much to do ma'am and I thought it would be impolite not to assist the new neighbors."

I shook my head, laughing. "It's fine Codsworth, I'm happy in the vault. Worry about the others."

Codsworth tilted his lead eyestalk, "If you're certain ma'am."

With a dip in altitude serving as a bow, he hovered off to whatever task he had next on his priority list. Mikhail pointed at the group clustered together in front of the Long's house. "That is the caravan that Ben came with, but he is with Preston and Goris in Rosa's old place."

"I'll speak to the caravan later," I turned and started across the street. "And we really should just start calling it Sturges's workshop."

The bear shrugged, "Old habits and all of that American drivel."

"Commie prick."

"Capitalist whore."

Our laughter got us a few odd looks as we stepped into the workshop. Sturges had really set about making himself at home there. The walls were covered with printouts, it took me a second to realize that these were from the ISA database. R&D's research was always good for warzone operations. The floor was now scattered with junk in a strange mix of chaos and order. In some places, piles of detritus seemed to be organized by their basic components, in others they seemed to form the half-beginnings of future projects.

The man himself was at the table we generally used for meetings, He seemed to be stripping the copper from lamps and disassembling some of the improvised rifles that we'd stripped off the corpses of raiders.

In what used to be the kitchen stood Preston, eternally in his faux colonial duster, speaking with the man who I had to assume was Benjamin Warus. He was the first non-feral ghoul that I had ever seen, the difference was obvious. Unlike the ferals, Warus stood with the same ramrod posture drilled into every marine from day one, his musculature was somewhat less than what one would expect from a drill sergeant, but nowhere near the emaciation of the creatures I'd seen outside of Gorski's. His kit was ancient, but exceptionally well maintained, grey combat armor, polymer plating and combat harness over a black bodysuit. His helmet sat on the stove, and to my pleasant surprise, the shoulder of his armor retained the bright red and gold chevrons and crossed rifles that formed a lovingly maintained gunnery sergeant insignia.

An M27 IAR sat on the counter next to the helmet. It was quite apparent that Warus had kept his equipment in remarkable shape considering the two centuries of use it must have seen.

After this moments observation, I stepped around Sturges's workspace and extended my hand. "Gunnery Sergeant Warus, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

When he turned around, I got a good look at his face. For the most part, it didn't seem too badly damaged, oddly smooth and pink with a number of scars spread around his face and neck, his skin had a few odd creases in some places and seemed worn thin in a few others. Painted on his breastplate, just over his heart, was the seal of United States Marine Corps. He grinned, showing off a set of slightly yellow, but otherwise normal teeth.

"Good to see you again ma'am, and please, it's just gunny." He returned my handshake with a surprisingly strong grip. "Been a while since FOB Blueshift," He stepped back and looked me up from down, "not that you look it."

FOB Blueshift? Ah, that's where I knew Warus from, he'd been part of Operation River Snake. We were training Chinese dissidents at a hidden base in Tibet, the initial plan involved using Green Berets, but we needed them for a separate operation in Thailand. Nate spent most of his career officially under the umbrella of Army special forces, but he'd actually been pulled out of the marines after infantry school. Nate had recommended Warus, his instructor from Parris Island. Warus had handpicked a couple of others to serve as trainers, the whole operation was crucial for the Gobi Desert campaign later.

Recognition dawning in my eyes, my face cracked in half with a grin and I almost hugged the old leatherneck. I'd take every piece of my old life that I could pick up. "Well, cryo isn't the worst way to stick it out for two centuries, easier than your way I suppose."

He snorted, "I'm a marine, the hard way is the only way I know." He looked around, "Now where is Captain Foggy, Ruskie over there wouldn't tell me. If that boy thinks the end of the world means he can slack off, he's got one hell of a wake up call coming."

It took me a second to realize what he was talking about. Foggy was Ben's old nickname for Nate, after the name of the ISA's tactical division, the Field Operations Group. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Ben looked at me oddly, and then his grin fell. "How did it happen?"

He deserved to know, so I told him about the deep voiced mercenary and the hazmat suits. I told him about the booming gunshot and how Shaun cried as they took him away, and how I pounded on the glass as they took him away, how it was the only thing I could do.

By the end of it, his wrinkled old hands were clenched into fists. "We're going to find these people Madison, and we're going to kill them, we are going to cut out their living guts, and use them string the bastards up from the highest tree I can find. I promise you that."

It almost made me smile, Ben was many things, but nuanced was not one of them. His friends were his friends, his enemies were his enemies. Friends were to be helped, enemies were to be murdered without remorse. It almost made me smile again. "Oh, I know that Ben, believe me, I know."

It was at that moment Goris decided to make his entrance, knocking over a pile of half-disassembled toasters. "Apologies," He was wearing his cloak with the hood fully covering his face. "I have concluded my business with the merchants. I am ready to leave as soon as the rest of you are."

Mikhail nodded, "Horoshij, I'd like to get this done and be back here before nightfall."

Oh, that's what they'd been waiting for. Sturges looked up from his work as if only just now realizing that his workshop was filled with people. "Time to go?"

"Damn skippy, drop your cock and get your socks boy." Ben hadn't raised his voice, but somehow it seemed to project itself into every inch of the room. A skill that came after the first decade of experience as a drill sergeant, I had to assume.

"Gotcha," he pulled off his gloves and shoved them in a pocket on his tool belt.

I turned to Mikhail, "On your way out, find a vest for him, from now on, everyone is tacted up for ops in any possible hot zones."

The Russian nodded, the marine looked at us all curiously, as if surprised this even needed to be said. Preston still stood in his corner, eyeing the rest of us. "I still think I should go with you on this."

Mikhail blinked, an expression of exasperation hidden to all who didn't know him like I did. "As I've said Preston, I'd prefer you remain here in case another situation arises."

"I understand, just trying to be where I'm most useful." I had to wonder if he was taking my critique about us doing all the heavy lifting the other day to heart.

"Alright, comrades, let's get this done. I'll meet you all at the bridge in five mikes." With that, Mikhail gave me a nod and turned to leave, Goris and Sturges were close behind.

The last to leave was Ben. As he gathered his gear, I offered him the warmest smile I could, "Seriously Ben, thank you for coming on with us, I know the old protocols don't mean much anymore, and I'm sure we aren't exactly the best prospect right now."

Warus strapped on his helmet and clipped his rifle into his sling. "Ma'am, you forget, I've seen the ISA at work. If you and the Ruskie are at the helm, you are the best prospect in the wastes. And as for the old protocols, Semper Fidelis, that doesn't change just because the world is FUBAR. I've been waiting for this for two hundred years."

"If I'm not a marine ma'am, I'm just some thug with gun, and I promised myself and God that I'd never be that way again." He snapped off a crisp salute and then he was out the door.

Which left me alone with Preston. There was a moment of awkward silence before he looked at me from under the visor of his hat and blurted out, "How the hell do you that?"

What was he talking about? "Do what?"

He gestured at the door, "How do you get these people to just follow you? I was talking to Ben before you came in, he seems like a good guy, a great addition to the Minutemen. When his caravan came in, he was ordering everyone around, even the merchant who was paying him treated him like he was in charge, but the second you walk in the door, he's practically on his knees. Same with Mikhail, Goris, Sturges, everyone just immediately treats you like you're in charge, and I don't get why?"

I was about to snap back with a sarcastic retort, but I paused and actually gave it some thought. Finally, I shrugged. "Well, in Ben's case, it's partially a chain of command thing, he's a marine, he lives, eats, sleeps, and breathes the Corps. He's been trained to follow a superior officer, and I happen to be one."

I leaned against the wall, but thought better of it when I felt a sharp piece of metal begin to pierce my jacket. "But the majority of it comes from the fact that we've worked together before and I got the mission accomplished and all of his people out alive. The fact that Nate liked me also kind of sped things along. As for the others, Mikhail doesn't really treat me like I'm in charge, it's more along the lines of us having worked together so long that we normally agree on things, and when we do disagree, we do it privately."

"And the others?" The irritation wasn't there now, it's place had been taken by what was apparently legitimate curiosity.

"Asher owes me his life and I'm fairly sure I'm the first person who has shown him any real kindness in quite a while. Goris seems to be in line with my philosophy, and Sturges just seems to be along for the ride." I folded my arms, "If you're asking why they side with me over you, that's a more difficult question, at least in Sturges's case. Personally, I think it's because he's a reasonable person and he sees that I get results."

"No offense, I get that I agreed to work with you and all, but you get your results in a pretty fucked up way. After last night, I don't know how the hell you sleep at night. Every time I close my eyes…" He shuddered.

I actually felt some sympathy for him. "I could tell you that it gets easier, but it doesn't until after the fifth or sixth time, and I'd really prefer if you didn't have to get to that point."

"Sixth time?" He blanched for a second but shook himself out of it, "I don't get you, I really don't, one minute you act like you hate me and everything I stand for, the next you're saying you admire me. One minute you're talking about how you want to help rebuild the Minutemen, the next you're acting like an up-jumped raider warlord. I mean, are you fucking bipolar?"

"Wait, you know about bipolar disorder?" I shook my head, "No, conversation for another time. In order of your questions, I do like you, it's just that you have so far been in opposition of any plans I've brought you in on, and while you aren't necessary to most of those plans, it has become necessary to keep you in the loop. Thus, I have to manipulate you out of the way. The other answer will require a discussion on philosophy that is way longer than we have time for."

His eyes narrowed, "You were goading me yesterday."

I closed my eyes for a second, not wanting him to see that they were rolling like marbles in a gravity well. "Of course I was goading you, do you honestly believe that I'm that socially inept? I was in covert operations for over a decade, if I'm screaming at you, it's because I've made a conscious decision that it serves my interests."

He shook his head, "So you wanted me pissed, why?"

I sometimes forget how slow people who haven't spent their lives surrounded by some of the best liars in the world can be. "Because either you were going to help or hinder my plans, and if you were going to stand in my way, I needed you gone as soon as possible."

He really seemed like my bluntness was throwing him off. Can't blame him, it's pretty far from what he'd come to expect from me, but this was a new approach, and I thought it might help. "So if I wasn't going to fall in line, you wanted to get me pissed off enough that I'd leave."

Yes, how much more obvious could I make it? Mikhail and Goris had seemed to grasp this concept immediately. "Exactly, I need to find my son, and I need to give him a quality of life somewhat relative to what was enjoyed before the world got nuked. In order to achieve this, I'm willing to do whatever puts me in a stronger position to accomplish those objectives."

"Why are you telling me all of this?"

Ah, finally a question worth asking. "Because despite my little speech the other night, I do actually prefer to maintain at least a somewhat amicable relationship with my colleagues. And manipulating you only seems to piss you off, so now I'm trying brutal honesty."

He looked at me, disbelieving, "I'm… going to need some time to process this 'new you' thing."

It wasn't really a new me, it was just a different approach, but, pointing that out didn't seem like it would help my case, so I settled for, "Sure, take as much time as you need. So long as you do your job."

Severely weirded out, he shouldered past me and was out the door.

I sighed, well, that was two meetings taken care of.

Only two more to go.

 **…..**

 **Hey guys, So what do you think of Ben? Someone will need to train the new minutemen, or have I said too much?**

 **Speaking of me saying too much, I'm asking this for myself and for you guys, do I need to give another Preston chapter after this? I've been told that I made his character a two dimensional asshole who screams and acts unpleasant, so I've been trying to give him more coverage and characterize him a bit more. It also gives me a chance to go on author tract about moral philosophy.**

 **Still, I don't want to go into it too much, because I feel like it might be annoying. Give me your opinions guys, have I found a good balance for Preston yet, do I need more or should I shut up.**

 **I won't lie, I really want to get Lexington over with and move on to the rest of the story.**

 **I'm also still struggling to keep my focus, I know I say that a lot, but I try and keep you guys apprised of where my mind is so you know where these chapters are coming from.**

 **R &R people**


	18. Chapter 18

Maybe I should have chosen the caravan for my next meeting, they were the time sensitive ones after all. Still, they would be gone tomorrow, and for now, I would still be here.

Thus my next trip was to the former DiPietro house. If I remembered correctly, he was among the corpses in cryogenic sarcophagi in the vault. An insurance actuary by trade and a high strung little fellow by nature, he'd been gaining weight in the months leading up to the war. A stress eater I assumed, not a good thing to be when you spent your days calculating the odds of death and destruction. He used to trail people at barbeques, telling them their odds of choking to death, or death by heart disease, or my personal favorite, the likelihood of the grill blowing up and killing Nate.

It was obvious that Rebecca had been hard at work restoring the place, almost all of the holes had been patched, pieces of metal welded into place told of Codsworth's work. The windows had been boarded up and they'd managed to get the door back in place. All in all, it wasn't in bad shape when all things were considered.

This was where the family we'd pulled out of Walden Pond a few days ago, or two days actually. It was hard to believe that it had been less than a week since Mikhail and I had come out of the vault for the first time. Felt like a lifetime ago. Still, focus on the moment. I stepped up to the door and rapped twice with my knuckles.

"One second," A woman's voice, Rebecca, came through the door. A second later the door opened and I got my first real look at the woman we'd rescued from raiders. She was about my height, with brown hair pulled up into a messy ponytail. The strangest thing about her was that she was wearing a vault suit, and it was unzipped almost to her navel. "Oh, hi."

"Uh, hi," God, she is hot, and very much flaunting it. "Can I come in?"

"Oh sure." She stepped out of the way, letting me inside. "The lady in the hill pays us a visit, to what do we owe the honor."

I surveyed the interior, she had been just as busy on the inside as on the outside. She'd dragged a couch and a couple of chairs from the other houses, and she'd torn down the barricade that was here when we were clearing out the bugs. The table and chairs from the barricade were arranged in the classic pattern. The entire thing resembled my old house, a mocking attempt at replicating the old world. "Just checking in, I haven't had time since…" I wasn't sure how to put it, I didn't usually speak to the people I pulled out of hot zones, "the operation."

Thankfully, she wasn't offended, smiled in fact. "Is that what you guys call it?" She shut the door behind us. "I like it, very medical, like excising a tumor."

There was a series of hacking coughs coming from one of the rooms. Rebecca looked at me, apology all over her face. "Just give me one minute."

I shook my head, "No problem, my son had horrible colic for the first year."

She smiled in sympathy and rushed off to deal with the sick child. I'd say it was the boy by the sound of it. I found one of the ancient easy chairs and tentatively took a seat. Amazing how well these things had weathered the centuries.

I felt like the reminder of Shaun should have been painful, but it wasn't, or maybe that emptiness was the pain. Losing a son wasn't a kind of grief that I was familiar with, friend yes, colleagues certainly, even a love, but a son was new to me. It was a new flavor of pain I didn't know, so I didn't know if I was feeling it or not.

Studying the room, a long formed habit, I picked out a few more details. On the coffee table was a copy of one of the old home décor magazines, this one called Picket Fences. That explained where she had gotten the layout from. On the counter sat a hot plate, attached to a fission battery. Tireless as he was, Sturges was stretched thin, a lot of projects were on the table and he couldn't have time for all of them, the electric grid being a big one that had been shuffled to the bottom of the stack. I'd have to press gang the Longs into service, even Murphy could probably handle some of the lighter stuff. More likely I'd have Mikhail do it, he needed to be seen as the authority after all.

Another, more urgent thing I noticed was what sat atop the hot plate, a pot containing a boiling liquid that smelled absolutely divine. I say urgent because my stomach decided to make itself known, growling like a wounded dog ready to bite, reminding me I hadn't eaten since before the operation. I'd have to remember to grab a bite at some point

"Sorry about that, Rina has a horrible case of the flu." Rebecca came back into the room, wiping her hands on her pants. "Probably picked it up from that time stuck in the water under the pond." A dark look crossed her face, "Those fuckers got off too easy, I should have skinned them alive." Then she seemed to remember she had company, "Sorry."

I leaned back in the chair, "If it's any consolation, the last one was pissing himself in fear as he ran away. You might still get the chance."

The grin she responded with reminded me of some nature documentaries I'd seen, where a group of wolves decided to attack a bear cub, and then mama showed up and made them regret it. I always enjoyed watching nature take its course. "You do strike a hell of a figure in that outfit. You should let me borrow it sometime."

I chuckled, shaking my head, "Tailor made for me I'm afraid, not in your size."

She went to stir the pot. "So, what's the mysterious lady of the hill's story?"

One of my eyebrows went up, that was the second time she'd called me that. "Is that really what people are calling me?"

She shrugged, "Just me so far, I've been trying to spread it around, but the neighbors just aren't buying it."

"They're an interesting bunch." Best to keep neutral for now.

That earned me a laugh, "Marcy's a bitch, Jun is catatonic, and Murphy's a drug addict." Realizing she might want to keep it neutral to, she backtracked. "I mean, don't get me wrong, Jun was helpful with fixing up and Murphy is nice, but…" She set down the spoon she was stirring with and decided that if she was digging herself a hole, she didn't want to dig any deeper. "You know, maybe all that shit is still getting to me."

I tried to look congenial, "If it helps, we're on the same page." Then my curiosity sparked, "Don't take this the wrong way, but where did you learn the word catatonic?"

She gave me a quizzical glance, "I used to help Doctor Sun at the Mega Surgery Center back in Diamond City. Why?"

"No reason." I really needed to learn a more subtle way to ask that question.

"Trying to figure out how stupid the bombs made us?" How did she…? "Codsworth mentioned you and the big guy were from before the war, didn't say how you guys are still alive though."

I inhaled sharply through my nose, Codsworth and I were going to have a chat about information control. Then again, I hadn't exactly been keeping it a secret either. "Cryogenics, they froze us, we were only defrosted a couple of days ago."

That threw her for the usual loop, I was getting used to the reaction. "So you guys were popsicles for 200 years. Where's everybody else?"

I knew what she meant, but I delayed anyway. "What do you mean?"

"I'm assuming they didn't just freeze you two, I don't know much about the life before the bombs, but freezing people seems like something you'd want to do in bulk." Damn, I usually like perceptive people, but this wasn't something I really wanted to talk about.

"They're dead, someone shut down life support for everyone but Mikhail and I. I'd assume they were the same people who shot my husband, kidnapped my son, and then put me back under for I don't know how long." If I was going to tell it, might as well tell it all.

That was the first time I seemed to leave her speechless, "oh."

For lack of anything else to say, "yeah."

There was a silence between us that lasted for the time it took her to rifle through the belongings she had stashed in the cabinets of the counter. When she reemerged, she was holding two glasses and a bottle of wine. "I know people's condolences only irritate me, and I'm assuming the same for you, so instead, daydrinking."

That actually made me laugh, "You have a sick kid in bed and soup boiling on the stove, and I've got to meet with the caravan. Neither of us can afford to be drunk right now."

She came back to the couch and set the glasses on the coffee table, filling each. "We're just down the hall from Rina, The soup still has a half an hour before its done, and that caravan will be there all night. Besides that, a few glasses of wine won't even give me a buzz, unless you're a lightweight."

There was something very likable about this woman, and she had a point, "fine," and I punctuated it with a long gulp. I've had good wine, I've had the best wine in the pre-war world. This was not good wine, but it contained alcohol, and it did its job.

The gauntlet had been thrown down, and Rebecca was happy to pick it up. She shotgunned the glass of wine and poured herself another. "So tell me, what did you do in the old days?" The she held up her hand, "Wait, don't tell me, you sold make up."

I laughed and shook my head. "Yeah, you got me. I'm an expert in all things powder and foundation."

Rebecca smirked triumphantly, "I am a master of observation." She took a sip of her wine, the theatrics of the drinking were done. "But seriously, what did you do? Unless knife fighting and glowing bodysuits were peak of fashion back then, I'm pretty sure you were something special."

Special, that was one way to describe it, I guess. Like a lot of things, I wasn't sure how to explain it to someone who hadn't lived in the world I had. It's like trying to explain the inner workings of a fiber optic cable to a central African tribe that had never even seen a telephone. "I was an intelligence officer."

The blank look confirmed my suspicions, she had no idea what I was talking about. "I was a kind of spy, I guess you could say. My job was to find out what the enemy, usually the Chinese, was planning. Other times I had to deal with terrorists, people who wanted to make trouble, hurt people, blow things up, because of what they believed. In general, my job was to deal with problems for the United States, hopefully before they could become problems."

She soaked it all in as I spoke, after I finished, she nodded, seeming to understand. "So kind of like what I read about once. This caravan from the Capitol Wasteland was up and he had a little red book with a guy and weird writing on the cover, he let me keep it as a gift, it talked about how to hide and make bombs, and eavesdrop, and how to drug people. All sorts of stuff like that."

Little red book… "The Chinese Special Operations Manual, they were always trying to sneak those things in to help their people train up the Fifth Column," catching myself on the terminology, "some of the terrorists I mentioned, those things were all over the place in DC, every raid on Fifth Columnists would turn up one or two, never really saw them around Boston though."

"I guess, I haven't seen another one since." She swished the ine around in her glass, "I wish I still had it, it was in the house when they burned it." She snorted, "House, it was barely more than a shack of rusted metal and a couple of two by fours. I never even wanted to leave Diamond City."

"So why did you?" I felt like I could guess, but I didn't want to be insulting.

"Oh, it was all Mark's idea, his grandfather had a homestead outside of Quincy, and he used to visit, and he thought it would be better for the kids to grow up away from all the Diamond City bullshit with the drugs and backroom politics." She rolled her eyes and exhaled through her nose.

"And the real reason was?" I was prodding as gently as I could.

She closed her eyes, "He was never really comfortable with my job, he told me he was okay with it when we got married, but he never really was." I was about to ask what she did, but she answered before I could ask. "I guess I can't totally blame him, being the wife of a prostitute, no matter how well it pays."

That was a surprise, "There a thriving trade in Diamond City? I'd expect that to be more of a Goodneighbor thing from what I've been told."

"Only if you want something cheap until the doctor takes his cut. If you want quality, and have the caps for it, you go to the Red Light." There was more than a hint of pride in her voice.

There must be some rule of reality that brothels always be associated with some kind of red lights, even two hundred years after a nuclear war. "So what led you to that line of work?"

She shook her head, a question she was apparently too used to answering. "I don't get why everyone always thinks there's a story behind it. I grew up in Diamond City, had a perfectly nice childhood, daddy was security, mom was an assistant in the Science Center. I worked at the inn for a while, then I realized I could make 1200 caps a week on my back to the 400 on my feet waitressing for half the work and a lot more fun. So I told Vadim I was quitting and went to work for Madam Theodora. My parents were fine with it, they were just happy that I was safe and provided for."

Well, I suppose standards change after the apocalypse, drop the cultural taboo and well paid prostitute falls in the same career class as doctors and merchants in the eyes of parents. Still, I had to ask the obvious question. "So how did you and Mark meet?"

She took another drink and read between the lines of my question. "He wasn't a client if that's what your asking, he was a caravan guard when we met. After we got married, daddy set him up with a job in security. I think that was part of the problem, a lot of the guards were clients and I don't think he could really handle the knowledge that a lot of his friends were sleeping with his wife. I think that's the reason he wanted to move out here so bad after the kids were born," She paused, this clearly wasn't a comfortable topic. "The way he looked at his friends and the kids, like he was comparing them, looking for similarities. I think he thought James and Marina might not have been his."

Not even waiting for a response, her nose flared and she snapped at me. "They are his."

I put up my hands defensively, "I believe you."

She took a deep breath and gave me a look of contrition, "I'm sorry, since what happened, I've been trying to focus on the good times, but all of the arguments Mark and I had keep playing through my mind."

I really hoped that Marina was asleep, her mother had to get this stuff out of her system, but those kids already had enough to deal with. "Don't worry about it, I know how you feel. Nathan and I fought constantly, for mostly the same reasons."

That was enough to swing her mind back to curiosity. "Being an intelligence officer involve having sex with your husband's friends too?"

She was only half joking. "No," I stopped, remembering my first assignment. "Not with your husband's friends at least." I took another drink of wine, Emma would tell me it was a delaying motion. "Nate and I had very separate views on where our lives were supposed to go. I was happy in my apartment in the city, he was the one who wanted to move out here. I was happy with my career, he wanted me to get out of intelligence, go and actually use my law degree for real rather than as a cover."

Actually, what he wanted was for me to quit working entirely to stay home and raise Shaun, but that idea went away when I didn't come home from the office for a week and a half and refused to speak to him. "He wanted the picket fence life with PTA meetings and neighborhood block parties, I wasn't even into my thirties yet, I had at least another fifteen years worth of field work before I'd have to come in from the cold. He thought the career was too dangerous for me with a son on the way. I didn't fit into the idyllic little life he had planned out."

And that was why we never worked, why he and I never shared what Ming and I had, he wasn't in love with me, he was in love with his idea of me, his dream of what we could become. He never realized that it was just that, a dream. "We fought over the move, we fought over my career, we fought over everything."

I put my glass down, the wine seemed even more bitter than before. Rebecca did the same and laid her hand over mine. She met my gaze and an understanding passed between us. Both of our marriages had been less than ideal, both of our husbands were dead, and now we were both asking the same questions. What could have been, were all those little fights worth it, would it have even lasted?

We each had different answers to those questions, and in the end we both knew it all came down to the same thing. None of it mattered, Mark or Nathan, her husband or mind, both were dead, no amount of questioning was going to change that fact. And now we both had to find our ways of moving on.

After what seemed like an eternity, a young nasally voice interrupted us. "Mom?"

Her daughter's voice jerked her out of whatever kind of moment we had been having, "Shit." Then in a louder voice, "Be right there, honey." She looked at the pot boiling on the hot plate, then looked back at me. "Would you mind…"

I waved a hand dismissively, "Go deal with your daughter I've got it."

With a thankful smile, she dashed off to deal with Marina. I stood up and went to check the soup. Grabbing the nearby ladle, I dipped it in the boiling liquid and pulled up a small sample, blowing on it to cool, I took a taste and considered before coming to the obvious culinary conclusion.

"Hmm, could use some salt."

 **….**

 **So what do you guys think of Rebecca? I'm introducing a whole lot of new characters these days.**

 **Random question, anyone want a non-explicit sex scene between these two. It won't affect the story in the long term, I've already got Madison's love interest worked out, the idea for the scene just popped into my head while I was writing this and I just thought, why not?**

 **I could go either way, so I leave it up to you guys. Give me some Yay or Nay advice on this.**

 **Big thanks to Valnarian, he sent me a PM with his thoughts on the story. If you guys want to do that, you're more than welcome to. Reviews, PMs, whatever, I'm always happy to talk about Fallout, my stories, the global refugee crisis, anything really. As I've said before, Nothing makes my day quite like hearing from you guys.**

 **On a related note, my muse has dragged me over to Vegas finally. I just couldn't resist her temptations any longer. I've written a few chapters of an M rated FNV story and I'm debating posting them.**

 **I didn't get much interest for them last time, but now that I wrote them, I figured I'd check again.**

 **Okay, R &R people.**


	19. Chapter 19

The rest of my visit proceeded relatively normally. The soup, with the addition of a pinch of salt, was delicious. Rebecca brought out a lanky thirteen year old with a comforter wrapped around her like a cloak, still struggling through the awkward phases of puberty. Still, it wasn't hard to tell that she would be the mirror image of her mother in a few years, and I told her so.

We ate and made polite conversation, Marina, like many others I was starting to realize, was fascinated what the world was like before we nuked the ever-loving hell out of it. She peppered me with questions about little details and rumors she'd heard. I was happy to oblige, though I did give her the sanitized version, she didn't need to know about things like the warzone that Detroit had become or the reports of cannibalism that had been coming out of the Appalachians.

In return, I asked a few questions about how they were settling in, if they needed anything, and a few other questions of that nature. I found out why the entire family was wearing vault suits. I hadn't looked into this because I still had my clothes, but as it turns out, there were hundreds of the suits in storage. Most of the useful stuff had been stripped away, I was assuming that it had been taken by the group that had attempted the coup. The weird thing was that they weren't all 111, the best reason that I could come up with was that they had just sent whatever excess suits they'd had here for storage, either that or it had been a shipping error that the war had prevented from being rectified.

In any case, the end result was the same. We had a huge stockpile of unused vault suits, fashionable, hell no, functional, perfectly. Not to mention, that most coveted of warzone resources, an industrial washer and dryer. At the very least, we could reliably count on clean clothing, something not to be underestimated in terms of morale boosting.

Throughout the entire conversation, I did my best to avoid even in indirectly referring to the events that had led them to Sanctuary. A lost husband was one thing, a lost father during childhood was one hell of another...

In the end, I checked my pipboy and bid them good day. I had one more meeting and two hours left before Asher would be out of surgery.

The caravan was still in its place down the street. A two headed cow wandered around the yards and street, one of the brahmin that I'd heard about. On the porch, eyeing the armed guards that had accompanied the caravan, sat Dogmeat. His mouth hung open as he panted, exposing teeth that had ripped throats out. There was something familiar and reassuring in the knowledge that he could go from playful and relaxed canine companion to deadly predator in an instant.

He gave me happy bark in greeting, and I scratched him behind the ears as I stepped inside. Marcy Long and an older woman with short hair were in the middle of a heated argument over the price of a dozen inhalers filled with what I had to assume were drugs.

Narcotics was a topic that I wasn't looking forward to dealing with. Making them illegal hadn't worked when there was a massive force of law enforcement officers and the full weight of the US government behind them, it sure as hell wasn't going to work for us. On the other hand, the last thing that we needed was a drug problem in our emerging organization.

In any case, I certainly wasn't going to stand in the way of us making a profit off of what we stripped off of the corpses of our enemies.

What I really didn't get was the whole bottlecap thing. I mean, I'm not going to pretend that printed currency had any more objective use, but it was backed by the common belief in the solvency of the United States Government. These things, as far as I knew, were just circles of metal, they didn't represent any tangible assets, and they weren't backed by any authority. They, much like gold and jewels in early civilizations, were only valuable because someone at some point in time had convinced a large enough group of people that these things had value for it to stick, and since then people had just assigned a value to them because other people had assigned a value to them.

At the very least, this gave me a chance to find out why no one had put a bullet in Marcy for her bitchy tendencies yet. The woman haggled like a rug dealer in an Egyptian bazaar, pushing and giving in wherever advantageous. She was still a bitch, but at the very least, it could be said that she was a useful bitch.

The same could probably have been said about me though, if I'm being honest.

After the dealing was done, I was able to get the leader of the caravan, a woman by the name of Trashcan Carla, to sit down and discuss business.

And all of my worries about the currency were proven to be entirely correct.

"So what is, say, a ten millimeter pistol in decent condition worth?" I was trying to get a feel for the currency strength.

"Sixty two caps."

"Why?"

The woman looked at me like I'd declared myself an imbecile. "Because that's what it costs, more if the person's stupid, less if they know how to barter."

The more the conversation continued, the more I realized that the woman wasn't using any objective standards to dictate prices, she just randomly threw whatever price she thought an item might be worth. Everything seemed to hinge on how well you could haggle. Not a massive problem in itself, but when combined with the totally arbitrary nature of pricing, it essentially meant that, assuming most of the Commonwealth was using the same ad hoc system as this woman, the currency had no store of value to it.

Another problem in post-apocalyptic society that needed to be fixed.

"Hey, I'm talking to you."

I took a breath and turned around, "And hello to you to Marcy."

The Asian woman glared at me. "There's a trading post at a diner south of here, Carla says a gang is giving them problems, you need to fucking go deal with it."

With that, the woman spun around and stormed off.

I didn't let myself get angry, I kept my voice calm and matter-of-fact when I called after her. "Marcy, one of these days, you're going to tell me what the exact reason is that you have such a problem with me, otherwise I'm going to hurt you very badly."

That seemed to get her attention, she paused, clenched her fists, and then continued storming off. I'd have to catalogue the supplies she'd bought later.

"Or maybe I can get you to do it, huh boy?" I scratched Dogmeat behind the ears again. "I've got to go deal with this nonsense and I'm taking Preston. Seeing if I can't get him to come around to our way of doing things."

The Shepherd cocked his head and gave a sarcastic bark, good luck.

"I know, I know, but we can use all the help we can get. Think you can keep things orderly on your own?"

He nodded and woofed in assent, then dipped his head in goodbye and went off to handle his own business.

There are some really surreal moments in my life these days, moments like these make me wonder if I'm still drowning off the coast of China and all of this is a fantasy created by my oxygen deprived brain.

In any case, I went to change and hunt for a fallen colonial. Once I was suitably attired, with a pistol on my hip, a pair of knives strapped to my forearms, and a tactical vest. I didn't really feel the need to fully suit up for what was probably a simple nuisance job.

I found Preston across the bridge, sitting under the Minutemen monument. His musket lay disassembled before him, meticulously cleaning each piece. The level of improvisation that the Minutemen had achieved was actually quite impressive, R&D had come up with plans for homemade laser rifles, but couldn't work out the ammunition problem. A simple handcrank hadn't occurred to some of the finest minds that we had to offer before the war. A dozen techies were rolling their graves.

He didn't speak to me as I approached, just went on cleaning. So I sat down next to him and started working on my pistol. After a few minutes, something occurred to me, and I laughed.

Preston eyed me suspiciously, "What?"

I shook my head, "Nothing, just noticing some irony." I paused and pointed at the statue we were sitting against, "How much do you know about the original Minutemen, way back in the Revolutionary War?"

He was quiet, and his cheek reddened slightly. He was fucking blushing, I wanted a camera. Embarrassment was a new look for him, a vast contrast to his usual attitude around me of righteous indignation. "Not much," he admitted. "Colonel Hollis said that they were a group like us, or we were like them, they were formed to protect their communities, and they stood ready to protect any innocent threatened at a moment's notice."

His eyes went misty as he reminisced, it almost felt wrong to break his delusions. "Well, partly right, they were formed to protect their communities and the Minutemen in particular were kept on alert for what was at the time considered rapid deployment. But the part about innocents had nothing to do with it, most of them were firm believers in slavery and a great deal of them wouldn't have cared if everywhere outside of New England was burned to the ground."

"What do you mean they supported slavery?" His eyes narrowed, it seemed that slavery still struck a chord in people, good.

Still, "That's a much longer discussion, I've got a few books on the revolutionary war and the historical period that I'll loan you some time. But you do know they participated in the Revolution, right?"

He nodded, "I read a few things here and there, and there was a bunch of shit in Concord talking about it."

Anything from Concord was most likely bull, the Museum of Freedom as it was called had been revamped in 2075 as part of the Induced Patriotism Initiative under Operation Brainstorm, a domestic propaganda engine focused on the promotion of American exceptionalism, undoubtedly one of the stupidest programs I'd ever heard seen. "Well, back then, weaponry was heavily inaccurate, so they had to conduct what was called massed formation warfare. You line a few thousand men on one side of a field, do the same on the other, and then have them shoot each other until one side retreats, is dead, or is weak enough for a charge to work."

Preston seemed to only be half following me, he seemed to be stuck on the fact that the original Minutemen endorsed slavery, not all of them of course, there was actually a significant number of African Americans involved. Still, the 1700s were the 1700s and today's horrible crime against humanity is yesterday's sound business practice. "The Minutemen weren't eager to give the British a battle on their terms, so they didn't. They hid in the trees and bushes, launched ambushes, raided camps under the cover of night, targeted officers, and used sharpshooter tactics. All of which was considered incredibly dishonorable, but it worked."

I didn't bother telling him that, while it had played a decisive role in denying the British freedom of movement in the American countryside and interior, the Revolutionary War had been won, for the most part, through large scale European style battles. "There's a big difference between sniping and ambushes, and fucking gassing someone."

And just like that, irony goes back to the argument. Let's be honest though, this was always where this conversation would lead. Still, we were finally at the central problem. "Why?"

Preston looked at me as if I'd just asked why a man has a penis. "What the hell do you mean why?"

"I mean, why?" I pressed on. "Explain to me what makes my methods unethical. Explain to me how doing things your way, going in and shooting them would have been better."

The Minuteman shook his head incredulously, still not believing the question. "Did you even see those corpses?"

I didn't blink, "Ever seen what a single 50. Caliber round does to a person, or what plasma will do to a person, or hell, have you ever seen a high powered laser reduce a person to ashes in a second. I'll agree, chemical weapons are a nasty business, I don't use them when they aren't the best solution, but the end result is the same. They're dead, they were problems in the way of restoring order and furthering our goals, so they had to die. Do you disagree on the premise that they had to die?"

"No, but…" he began.

I cut him off. "So why does it matter how they die? Why is it more ethical to kill a group of people one way than another? I'm familiar with all of the ethical theories on the matter. From a utilitarian perspective, I'm in the right. What I did minimized suffering by killing them in the way that presented us with the least risk and cost the least in terms of materiel. This will allow us to maximize happiness by using our time and resources to help others. From Kantian deontology, they killed others, they opposed the social order, thus they had to be deemed guilty and punished. In Kant's words, this was a categorical imperative. According to Hobbes, we're working to restore the social contract, that automatically gives us carte blanche to do whatever we need to accomplish that goal." I cocked my head to the side as another thought occurred to me, "Rawls and Rosseau might disagree, but the very existence of the raiders presents a problem for Rawls and outright disproves Rosseau."

"What the hell are you even talking about?" Note to self, amend top ten list of priorities in the reestablishment of civilization to include ensuring the revival of philosophy as an academic discipline.

Beside the point, I shook my head. "My point being, I can work my actions through every major ethical framework, and I come out right every time. So tell me why it's morally wrong, and please do not pull the desecration of bodies argument again. Because it's insulting to both of us."

Preston scowled and went back to reassembling his weapon. "I don't need a whole bunch of fancy justifications like you, I know what's right and wrong."

"No, you fucking don't." Okay, I'm about to completely lose it, but this shit has been thrown at me too many times. "If you do, you have to have a reason why something is right or wrong. Otherwise, you're just fucking co-opting pseudo morality to justify why you like or dislike something. That's not ethics, that's bullshit pride and a god complex in a bad disguise. And if you're killing for bullshit pride and pretending to be a hero, then you're worse than the raiders, at least most of them seem to acknowledge their motivation is personal gain."

This wasn't the goading I had done previously, I was legitimately fucking angry. And by the way Preston jumped to his feet, ready to throw a punch, the feeling was mutual. "You wanna know how I fucking know what's right and wrong, I know what I've seen with my own fucking eyes, I know what I've done with my own fucking hands. You think I haven't heard your bullshit before, anything for the mission, anything to win. Who cares who gets in your way so long as the mission is accomplished? That's the only thing that matters, right?"

I'd really struck a nerve here, the professional part of my brain blotted out my anger and I stepped back into cold observation and just let him continue. "Prisoners only cost supplies, so why not just execute them? Who cares if they surrendered? Why bother honoring terms of surrender? If a settlement is in your way, why not take what you want and burn it down? If a member of the team is wounded, they'll only slow you down, better to just put a bullet in them and be done with it, right? What's wrong with abducting children to help fill the ranks, nine years old is old enough to block a bullet?"

Ah, now I was starting to get a real idea on Preston's antipathy towards my tactics. It wasn't even about the Minutemen, not really. From the sounds of it, our golden boy hadn't always been so golden. I let him continue on his rant for a few more minutes, these things were a little too specific to be random acts of violence. When he finally wound down, I asked, "So what exactly did you do?"

"All of it, and more. You wanted to know how I know what's right and wrong, that's it. What I did with the Gunners, that's wrong. What I did with the Minutemen, that's right. I don't need any 'ethical theories' as you call them to try and justify one or the other. What I did when I was a kid, I can never make up for it, and the Minutemen were the only thing that let me even try." Guilt is a powerful motivator, and from the looks of it, Preston Garvey was highly motivated.

Now that I understood what was behind those feelings, I knew that a screaming match was getting us absolutely nowhere. "Alright, I can understand that, but I have a simple question for you, why were the Gunners doing what they were doing?"

Preston opened his mouth, some retort to shut me down probably on his lips, but then he closed it and actually seemed to put some thought into the question. "For power."

Alright, good, this was going where I needed it to go. "Okay, but why did they want power, what did they want to do with it?"

This was part of my argument, but it would actually be good intelligence to have. Preston did at least seem to really ponder the question before admitting, "I don't know, they didn't tell us anything other than our objectives."

Shame, but that would have been too easy, wouldn't it? "And why were the Minutemen doing what they were doing?"

This one he didn't even have to pause for, "To help the common people."

No zealot like a convert, "So if our goal is to help people, then wouldn't it make sense to do what will help the most people?"

He knew what I was doing, but he also didn't know how to fault my logic. "Yes."

"And if the best way to help is to eliminate people who are hurting others, then the best way to go about that is to eliminate them as quickly as possible, using the minimum amount of resources so that we can use the other resources for further operations in protecting the common people, right?" This was essentially the same argument that I'd made to him when I was reaming him out for being an idiot. I was hoping that in a more reasonable discussion, I might actually make some headway.

Preston still didn't like what I was saying, "Not if it means lowering ourselves down to the level of the bastards we're trying to stop."

"But how are we lowering ourselves to their level? If our ambition is to help people and their ambition is simply to seize power, which in your own words is the difference, then so long as our ambition doesn't change, we are morally superior." It was a very deontological argument, a mode of thought I really don't subscribe to, but hey, whatever works.

He looked ready to protest, but he was running out of arguments to make. He was going to pull the methods card out again, I needed to put that to bed. I waved my hand in front of his face, "Was that moral.

"What?" Now he was confused again, good.

"Was it moral for me to wave my hand between us?" A stupid, but poignant question.

And the stupid, unanswerable, question look was back. "I don't know, what the hell does that have to do with anything?

This was basic stuff that anyone who had ever been through a college level intro to ethics class would know. "An action has no moral value unto itself, the only things that can dictate the morality of an action are the reasons for undertaking said action, and the consequences of that action. Can you come up with another way of deciding whether an action is moral or not?"

Of course he couldn't, I couldn't, no one could, because there wasn't one. So I didn't wait for him to answer. "No, because there isn't one. If our reasons for carrying out an action are selfless, then the action is moral. If our actions create more happiness than suffering, then they are moral. So, if we have to carry out a few truly nasty actions in order to restore order and promote the common good, we are doing the right thing. It's that simple."

Actually, it wasn't, I wasn't getting into hedonistic calculus and the equations involved in working out exactly how much suffering and happiness an action created. Nor was I getting into the demands of deontology that everyone be viewed as equal and that treating oneself or others as being special was unethical, not to mention the other prohibition on lying that Kant had tied into that assumption. But none of that was all that important or helpful in getting my point across.

Preston let out a long sigh, my father always described as a wearer-downer when it comes to arguments. "Why do you even care, I already agreed to do things your way, why are you so obsessed with getting me to agree with you?"

"Because after Lexington, I'm leaving, I have to find my son. And you and I both know that once I'm gone, Mikhail is the one who's going undisputedly running things. And he'll need lieutenants with tactical experience who understand and accept what he's trying to do. And unless you plan on running off, that's going to include you." I looked at my pipboy, I only had an hour left before Asher's surgery was set to finish.

"Now come on, I've already spent too much time on this, we've got shit to do."

 **….**

 **Okay, new rule, I am to be kept far far away from Preston. I think I need to put some distance between myself and the Minutemen too. This chapter did not go anywhere near where I had initially planned. I don't know if I'd call it bad, but it definitely didn't turn out as what I initially started writing. Something about Preston and the Minutemen just makes me go on into massive author tracts about economics and ethics. Or would it be an author filibuster, or character filibuster, I can never remember the difference. I think we're about three chapters away from leaving Sanctuary and beginning the hunt for Shaun.**

 **I'm putting this out on a Thursday because on Friday I'm putting out the first chapter of my FNV story. That one won't be updated regularly as I'm focusing on this one as much as I can. It will be rated M and under the title of Luck Be a Lady. Also, you guys should check out the story I posted on Tuesday, Dark Valentine. It's a rough adaptation of a Philip Marlowe story, I kind of lost it at the halfway point and started racing for the end, I'll probably go back to it at some point to rewrite the last half, but until then, you guys should have a look.**

 **Alright, R &R people. **


	20. Chapter 20

I knew I was too late as soon as I heard the screaming.

I practically leapt out of the elevator the moment the gate started to open and scrambled up the balcony scaffolding, not wasting time with the stairs. Sprinting through the entryway and down the main hall, I nearly lost my balance on the wet floor, flailing forward and only just catching myself on one of the exposed pipes. Surprised the damn thing didn't take a patch of my skin, it was so damn cold. Still, I hooked around the corner and down the stairs.

Damn it, I was ten minutes early, this shouldn't be happening.

I found Asher in a heap in front of the autodoc, wailing in agony. I grabbed a syringe of Med-X from the top of a filing cabinet and uncapped the needle, jamming it into the newly installed injection port on his lower forearm. The system registered the injection and rushed the distribution of the drug into the bloodstream and throughout the body. A few seconds later, his screams died away and he calmed.

He coughed, hacking up biogel on his chest. "Wha… what the hell happened?" He opened his eyes, and immediately must have realized just how bad an idea that was. "Agh, damn it what the hell is wrong with my eyes?"

I ducked under his shoulder to support his weight and helped him to his feet, "Questions later, bed now."

It was a good thing that the cafeteria and quarters were just down the hallway. Moving, even with the drugs, was ungodly painful for Asher.

We'd cleared out most of the beds from the quarters, but there were still a few, and I shrugged him onto the one closest to the entrance. "Why is everything burning?"

"Because your entire body has been renovated and restructured in the course of about twelve hours. And before that you took about five rounds to the back, piercing multiple organs and disconnecting your spine at the L4 vertebrae." Blunt, but there's no good way to tell someone that they were shot in such a way that should have permanently disabled them.

"What?"

Oh right, biology classes aren't exactly common anymore. "You were shot in the stomach and two of the bullets went through to the spine in a place that would normally take away your ability to walk."

"And I still can because of this… renovation?" He shifted around on the mattress, trying to find a more comfortable position, which was of course impossible because his entire nervous system was on fire as it came to grips with the intruding system.

"Basically, you've been outfitted with a standard ISA tactical cybernetic rig." I jumped back as his arm shot out at me.

He opened his eyes again, in shock, then immediately screwed them shut again. "What the hell!"

I sat back down on the bed and rested a hand on his shoulder as gently as I could, "Nothing to worry about. Your body just needs a bit to adapt to the enhancements, this is why I wanted to be here before you got done with surgery. You pressed the emergency release, didn't you?"

The guilty look on his face told me everything I needed to know. "Not your fault, it happens, or used to happen, a lot. Waking up in biogel after getting shot is never fun. I meant to be here, but I got busy dealing with Preston and these morons who were trying to harass someone over a drug debt."

"Really… how'd that go?" I had to respect the kid, grinning and bearing it. The bearing it part is easy, it's not optional, the grinning is the hard part.

"Preston still won't budge on the whole honorable warfare shtick, the drug gang crumbled like a cookie submerged in milk for an hour. I put a blade to their leader's throat, and suddenly, what do you know, the debt suddenly didn't matter all that much." Preston gave his whole spiel to the proprietors of the trading post, a kid in his late teens or early twenties and his mother.

I won't lie, I'm not entirely sure scaring that group away was the right call. On one hand, Wolfgang was a drug dealer threatening to ransack a woman's home and possibly kill her and her son. On the other hand, the guy wasn't just dealing drugs, he seemed to be running a pretty similar operation to Carla, selling whatever he could scavenge, and he hadn't forced the kid to take the drugs, there weren't any laws against it, and hell, we sold a bunch of drugs to Carla, so we weren't exactly in a place to judge.

The morality of it didn't bother me all that much, nobody got hurt, nobody died, that's the best way it could have ended. My problem came in the fact that if we gained a reputation for stiffing merchants on payment on legitimate transactions and threatening them with force to back off, then not a lot of caravans would want to make the trip up to Sanctuary. Still, we'd be dealing with Trudy on a regular basis, and establishing contacts along trading routes was more important than keeping one drug dealer happy.

"You do have that effect on people, I should know." His body must have been acclimatizing, he managed to open his eyes, though he was still squinting.

I laughed, "Well, it's easy when you're about sixty leagues above almost everyone else. You'll be finding that out soon enough. You're really lucky, they didn't have the biogel when my system was put in."

He looked on curiously as I stripped off my vest and shirt, then gasped in shock. They always did that, "The biogel keeps you from scarring up, which is good, because the surgery essentially has to tear your back down the middle and from there it peels the two folds back in a way that kind of looks like macabre butterfly wings if you're watching while it happens…"

He was shaking his head, "Okay, I really, really, don't want to know this right now. I mean, I'll want to know later, but maca… whatever butterfly wings is too far for me right now."

I pulled my shirt back on and let out a small laugh. "Fine, but do you want to know exactly what we shoved inside of you."

Making him blush was so easy, "Please don't put it that way, but sure."

I took him through each part of the system in chronological order.

The first real step towards functional cybernetics began on a night in 2062 when Robert House noticed that he was having trouble reading a report from my father. A visit to an optometrist revealed that his vision had slightly worsened and he'd need reading glasses. A normal person would have either followed the doctor's advice to get the glasses or ignored the suggestion out of pride.

Robert House wasn't a normal person, he responded by going straight from the optometrist's office to his personal laboratory and workshop, there he locked himself in for two straight weeks before emerging with the sketches of what would become the Optics Enhancer. The device was very similar to a cataract, replacing the lens with a small camera that fed into an augmented optical nerve.

The problem with it was the same problem that had prevented cybernetics in the past, the body rejected it. The idea might have withered on the vine, had it not been for the single greatest boon for technological development since the discovery of electricity. Palandine, a top secret object recovered by the ISA. From that came the inventions that became the most impressive gadgets in the Activity's arsenal. The most relevant right now was the precursor to biogel, this allowed the body to meld with the implant.

From the Optics Enhancer came a hundred different little spin off inventions. Telescopic sight, thermal vision, magnetic and x-ray vision, recording capabilities, and of course the cochlear enhancements. It went from minor corrections to being able to bring a legally blind person to twenty/twenty vision. The version implanted in Asher was the basic model, full vision correction, hearing ability correction, minor low-light resolution enhancement, and of course the connection to the broader system.

Naturally, the military took an interest in the technology, and one of the first things that they wanted was the Logic Co-Processor. The military wanted their officers upgraded, they wanted them to have photographic memories, onboard GPS navigation systems, and full tactical awareness through the optical and cochlear implants. The processor acted as a command and control center for the rest of the system. Once again, Asher got the basic model with enhanced memory retention, basic expansion of higher learning functions, navigation assistance, and sensory collation.

This led to the Probability Calculator, which did exactly what it said by taking the mathematical functions of the Logic Co-Processor and focusing them in the prefrontal lobe in order to optimize decision making. This in conjunction with the Optics Enhancer became the initial version of VATS, the Vault Assisted Targeting System. Named because of the contract RobCo took with Vault-Tec to supply every vault with pipboys.

The VATS idea launched the Reflex Booster, a complete overhaul of the human nervous system to give humans lightning fast reactions. This wasn't actually that difficult, it was really just an expansion on the technology used in the Optics Enhancer, the problem was that moving the body at this speed tended to cause injury. The solution to that was the NEMEAN system and the Monocyte Breeder, the NEMEAN system strengthened the body's skin to prevent tears, the Monocyte Breeder healed the minor muscle injuries as they occurred, and the bone problem was brute forced, they simply reinforced the entire skeleton with titanium. The heart and lungs were augmented and the veins reinforced to be able to handle the extra strain on the cardiovascular system. The final piece was the Nociception Regulator to deal with the pain this would obviously cause.

The final piece was the Hypertrophy Accelerator. This was created as almost an after thought on request of the military. They wanted something that would allow them to take an average civilian and get them into fighting trim within two weeks and keep them in shape without the need for regular physical training. The Hypertrophy Accelerator did this by enhancing the effects of average exercise and everyday movements and serving as an artificial protein generator. It was a simple system, you set the musculature level on a one through ten scale and the Hypertrophy Accelerator got you there and kept you there. One had to be somewhat gradual about it, going from a one to a ten all at once was likely to do permanent damage. Going from a ninety pound lightweight to two hundred pounds of pure muscle done correctly with the Accelerator would take about two months.

For the most part, these items were implanted piecemeal, and you wouldn't find them outside of the military or classes of people with incomes lower than six million a year. On average, a full rig of basic gear such as the one implanted in Asher ran the price of two million dollars. A high level rig like mine would run you about twenty million.

Through my entire spiel, Asher sat quietly and absorbed what I was saying. Once I finished, he asked, "So now what?"

That actually got me to grin.

"Now we get serious."

 **…...**

 **Yeah guys, I know, another monologue chapter, or would it be an infodump chapter, but this was necessary, if there are any of you left from the beginning, you know that the very first chapter I ever wrote was a PipBoy infodump chapter and I've put one in every one of my Fallout stories since.**

 **But I promise, like Madison said, next week, we get serious, and hopefully, the week after that is Lexington.**

 **I say hopefully because, well, you remember how I said I was working on my transfer. Said transfer is almost done. Next Friday, I'll officially be a student living on campus at the University of Illinois Springfield. I'm really excited about this because my life is finally moving forward after two years of generals, but it's going to be my first time living on my own and I'm going to be really busy.**

 **I'm going to try and keep up with the updates, but things are almost guaranteed to be spotty now. In other news, I know there was no new chapter of LBaL, after I put the first chapter out, I got some interest, and now I'm going to take the few chapters I have back and put some polish on them.**

 **Just one more thing, and I know this is already a long Author's Note, but this needs to be said.**

 **I'm a very political person by nature, it's what my degree is going to be in. I don't mention it a lot on FF because that's not what you guys are here for. But I've got a decently sized audience to hear this now, and I can't morally be silent about this.**

 **The events of August 12, 2017 were, without any shadow of a doubt, disgusting. My heart goes out to Heather Heyer and any of those injured standing up to the hatred there. To any of those who participated in the so-called "Unite The Right" rally, you are disgusting and should be ashamed of yourselves. Words cannot express how far beneath my dog's shit you are. My grandfather was a tank instructor during World War 2, his brother was on Omaha Beach, to see Americans celebrating the cause that they fought to destroy, is disgraceful. To see these people celebrating the perpetrators of the Holocaust and the perpetrators of slavery, celebrating groups that murdered American soldiers and are responsible for two of the greatest atrocities in the history of the human race, is appalling.**

 **So now I'll say what Donald Trump seemingly can't. I fully condemn white supremacists and Nazis, as well as the cause they represent in the strongest possible sense. If any of you guys, my readers, support these causes, if any of you are angered by what I have said, then kindly unfollow, unfavorite, or just stop reading my stories, because I don't want your support in any form.**

 **Hatred does not represent America, Nazism does not represent America, we stand strong behind our convictions and our ideals of freedom and human decency no matter what, and we shall never let those who stand against these ideals corrupt our nation. We represent America.**

 **Thank you, R &R people.**


	21. Chapter 21

The next week was a blur of meetings, salvage operations, and rebuilding. Mikhail, Ben, myself, and even Preston regularly met to hammer out the operational protocols of the future Minutemen. The meetings were surprisingly productive, Ben of course took charge of the creation of a training curriculum for prospective recruits, but before he could begin that, first we needed to know what exactly he would be training them for.

There were a few base changes from the old concept that we all agreed upon immediately, surprisingly, even Preston didn't offer much protest to most of the adaptations. The most important was that there had this had to be a solid organization with a centralized chain of command, not the nebulous association of militias that the previous group had been. Preston resisted the total reformation at first, arguing that the ability of individual commanders to make independent commands was necessary due to the spread out nature of the organization, but agreed when we countered that something like Quincy shouldn't have been able to happen, the other colonels shouldn't have had the option of refusing to support Hollis when they could have reasonably done so, a more formalized hierarchy of command could have prevented this.

Another immediate change was that we needed to be proactive rather than just reactive. The way Preston described the old group, they would assault hostile strongholds, but only after said group had been a consistent threat, otherwise they were primarily focused on defending the settlements from attacks as they came. This was an understandable, but stupid strategy. Defense is, without consideration for situational factors, by default the stronger position and it makes sense for a volunteer militia to focus only on defending their homes. The problem with this is that reacting only to attacks is like treating only the symptoms rather than treating the underlying sickness. The better option is to eliminate the hostiles in their bases before they could attack civilians, but this would require a trained and organized fighting force.

This distinction led us to conclude that separating the organization into three separate groups would be best. The first group would resemble the old Minutemen the most, these would be the garrison troops. They would be assigned to a settlement or other location that was under the authority of the Minutemen and hold it against any hostile elements. These would be, in terms of logistics and training, the lowest tier of the armed forces. At some point an element of this group would be dedicated to domestic law enforcement, but that was something to worry about later, when we had laws to enforce.

The next group would be the offensive element, these people would be dedicated to bringing the fight to the enemy's living room. They would assault enemy strongholds and eliminate hostile groups, ideally before these groups could ever become a threat to our interests. These would be the second tier, they would need better weaponry and more advanced training than the garrison troops in accordance with the more dangerous and complicated operations that they would be undertaking.

The third and final group would be the special missions units, the reforged Vympel. These would be handpicked and trained by myself or Mikhail. They would undertake special operations missions, assassination, infiltration, sabotage, psychological warfare, and other tactics in what was once called ungentlemanly warfare. They were tier one, answerable directly to Mikhail and I. Though what wasn't mentioned was the fact that it would be mostly Mikhail, I still hadn't mentioned that I would be leaving after Lexington. Logistically, they were a blank check, to be equipped as needed.

This led to Ben suggesting that establish a two stage training program, to be extended into a three stage program when we had the manpower for it. The best of those who passed the first phase would move on to the second phase to be trained in offensive warfare, while the rest would be garrison troops. This arrangement worked because the offensive troops would need to be able to defend a location as well as assault it. There would inevitably need to be sub-designations, dedicated medics, engineers, the usual specialty trades of any professional fighting force.

While the assault troops were going to be little different than the troops that Ben, Mikhail, and I were familiar with, the garrison forces would need to be different in order to maximize their effectiveness. The key points for these guys would be the ability to fortify a position and hold a perimeter for indefinite amounts of time with minimal supplies, and without putting too fine a point on it, these guys had to be able to be mass produced, minimal training time, minimal supply cost. The assaulters could wait, but we needed a defensive combat force immediately.

The solution to this, surprisingly, was simply to use Revolutionary War era tactics. The idea came from a few of the descriptions Preston gave of his previous engagements. The laser musket that served as the primary weapon for the old Minutemen was ideal for what we had in mind. It was relatively easy to make and source materials for, didn't require ammunition, and was highly accurate while being easy to train with. Once we established this, we ran with the idea of using musketry tactics.

A soldier with a laser musket out in the open didn't stand a chance, even against an untrained force wielding pipe weaponry, the rate of fire was prohibitive. A trained squad behind cover, however, would be devastatingly effective. Building walls out of the materials that we had available would be costly in terms of supplies and the abundant amount of lumber we had access to would probably be unavailable in most cases. One thing that would almost always be available considering where most of the settlements we would be dealing with were located was dirt.

Two feet of dirt is enough to stop most common calibers of bullets, more than enough for the .38 calibers that these raiders seemed to use for the most part. Good old fashioned earthworks, surrounding areas of fire pre-cleared of cover, and a few squads of laser musket wielding marksmen should be enough to repulse almost any assault from raiders, barring those with access to heavy explosives, and any wall would be highly vulnerable to them.

This strategy became even more feasible when Sturges finally unveiled his secret project.

…

"So what exactly is it that he wants to show us?"

We were standing outside the remains of the Wicked Shipping Fleet Lockup, Sturges had called us there to finally tell us what he'd been working on in his every spare moment. "I don't know, I'm more curious as to when he cleared this place out and why he didn't tell us."

Mikhail had his assault rifle slung over his chest, "He took the power suit, we pulled out of the salvage yard, and a shotgun we got from the raiders, two days ago, I thought he just wanted to tinker with them."

"Guess not," Ben gestured to the pile of burnt corpses that I had to assume had been ghouls, the corpses were too emaciated to be human, even after burning. "We might want to rethink putting him on combat rotation, kid can handle himself."

"Too valuable, Sturges is the only reason that Sanctuary is half way up and running." Even Preston didn't know what the hell Sturges was up to.

"Come on guys, it's in the shed." Sturges had finally made his appearance, leaning out the door of the main building.

Without anything else to do, we moved towards the shed, and then we learned Sturges had a showman's side to him. The doors flew open and out came two utility protectrons in front of a gift worthy of Christmas morning.

"Sturges, you chertov genij, you've outdone yourself. How the fuck did you do this?"

In front of us was a forty four ton, ten foot tall, Mega-loader, and it was fucking functional. Sturges popped out of the rusted out cab. "Wasn't all that hard, the reactors still work, least when you put in some new fuel cells to even 'em out, you just need to find to swap out the parts that rusted out. Between the stuff I stripped off the piece in front of the vault, the shit we got from the robo dump, what was already here, and a couple of rolls of duct tape, gettin' this old thing up and running was easy. The cars are harder, their parts aren't as tough"

Fucking perfect.

…

With the Mega-loader operational, power armor frames, and the two utility protectrons, the progress on getting Sanctuary up and running moved forward with leaps and bounds.

We had to reinforce the footbridge with extra lumber, but the power armor made this fairly easy. Once that was done, we brought the Mega-loader across and established dirt walls around the perimeter. Six feet thick, reinforced with lumber, a bullet wasn't getting through. The terrain made maneuvering the loader a bitch though. It would make building earthworks in other locations a breeze though.

The utility protectrons and Codsworth's tool modifications were immensely helpful in fixing up the houses still standing and the power armor made breaking up and clearing the houses that had collapsed.

With Sturges's project done, he was throwing himself completely to setting up the local infrastructure. In one day, he finished a jury rigged satellite jacked into a relatively television that he pulled out of my old house and the terminal that had belonged to Smith, a bit of tweaking and we could bounce the signal off of Olivia to give us a local connection to the network. And within two days we were finally able to bring the transformer up from the Rocket and connect it to the neighborhood power grid, which we were able to splice into the vault's power systems.

The end result was that by the end of the week, we had Sanctuary more or less up and running. Sturges continued to work night and day, usually retreating to his workshop at the Rocket come nightfall. He also continued to go off on salvage operations of his own, usually without informing anyone. Every so often he would just stroll into Sanctuary in a power armor frame he'd found in a train car south of Drumlin Diner, putting our total number of suits to one complete T-45, two frames, and a mishmash of T-45 and 51 parts, hauling a load of whatever salvage he wasn't keeping for himself on the makeshift cart he'd made out of a rusted out car frame. Always with a detailed report of where he'd been, what he'd gathered, and what he'd left.

This was all useful, but there were a few things that still bothered me. At no point had I ever seen him sleep, not odd in itself, but considering his output, there was no logical way he was getting enough sleep for a healthy human being to function. Despite this, my search of the Rocket, Sanctuary, and even the Wicked Shipping Fleet Lockup didn't turn up any drugs, and if he was using, he was highly functional.

Not exactly being a proper friend, but one has to prioritize, if he was functioning at this high of a level, it wasn't a problem that needed to be addressed. Quick note, do not take this as my advice for most drug problems.

One of those priorities was training Asher. In between the meetings and salvage operations, Mikhail and I were putting in at least a few hours a day running him through the necessary skills for special operations.

We had a pretty simple division of curriculum, I handled the abstract parts, such as mission planning and espionage, Mikhail handled the more practical aspects, such as close quarters combat and instinct shooting. Both of us were competent in all of these areas, but our backgrounds made each of us better than the other in certain areas.

Usually Mikhail would work him to the bone and then beat him to a pulp before sending him to me to get patched up and work on his lessons.

…

"Ow."

"Don't be a baby. Put this to your face." I handed him an ice pack

"How exactly am I supposed to beat Mikhail again?" He held the pack to the purplish-yellowish spot that covered the left side of his jaw. With the monocyte breeder, he'd be fully healed by tomorrow.

"You're not, you're supposed to give it your all and make mistakes, then learn from those mistakes, and try again." We were in my old house, sitting around the same table I'd debriefed him at.

"And in the process get my ass kicked. I don't get why I can't use VATS, it's the only way I stand a chance." I'd been teaching him how to use the targeting system, for obvious reasons, he'd taken a pretty quick liking to it.

"Because, tech enhances skill, not replaces it. I didn't get the implants until I was twenty two, Mikhail didn't get them until he was twenty six. You need to be able to operate on your own merits before you can start implementing the tech." This was the most common mistake I'd found among those who got the tech before the training.

"Still, how the hell did he learn how to fight like that?"

I spread a few files out in front of me. "Mikhail had a rather unique upbringing, he's got a military ancestry going as far back as the Varangian Guard, he's had a family member serving with distinction in every armed conflict the Russian Army's been involved in since Peter the Great founded the Russian Empire. His great-great grandfather was a hero of the Russo-Japanese War and World War one. He survived the first Russian Civil War by defecting to the Red's side on the condition that the Romanov's youngest children were spared. Lenin had to allow it, the man was too useful to be killed and too dangerous to be allowed to live as an enemy." I paused and looked up, "How much of what I said are you getting?"

Asher shrugged, "More than I used to, but still not much. What does all of that have to do with Mikhail being able to fight like he does?"

I keep forgetting these people didn't attend any formal schooling. "Long story short, in his family, from the moment a son is born, he's being groomed to be the next Hero of the Soviet Union. If you don't have at least one Order of Lenin before your thirty, you're a disappointment." The blank look on his face told me I still wasn't getting anywhere. "Okay, side note, you're reading up on Russian military history tonight, besides that, do you know what a bear is?"

"I think so, big, hairy, mean, walks on four legs, big teeth, sharp claws. We call them Yao Guai." Monster in mandarin, interesting.

"Think that, make it up to a ton and eight feet long, and you've got the picture. His father used to take him hunting for those when he was a boy." I let a moment pass to help the effect, "with machetes."

That got the appropriate reaction out of him, "holy shit."

"Exactly," I pulled a diagram out of one of the files and laid it in front of him.

"Now, work up an entry plan for this building."

…

Needless to say, his training was moving along rather well.

Now, you've probably noticed that I haven't mentioned Lexington, by no means should you think that it hasn't been on my mind.

Mikhail spread the bodies from Olivia around the edges of the city like candy, sometimes just dumping them in the middle of the street in between raider patrols, sometimes propping them up on street corners, occasionally even impaling them on wooden pikes or pinning them to walls, and on each one was a simple note carved into the flesh of the corpse. Looking forward to our visit, the General is coming, the Reaper sees you, things like that.

We were maintaining a steady psychological pressure campaign, carrying out extensive reconnaissance in depth of the city, the Skyway proved extremely useful in that regard, and even launching a number of pinprick attacks taking out lone sentries or isolated groups. Yet, we were still not getting a reaction.

It was at this point that it became clear that simple reconnaissance wasn't going to cut it here. We needed an inside look at what was going on in their main operations hub, the factory. We needed to get an idea on what the human terrain looked like.

We couldn't send Asher in for the obvious reason that as far as everyone there knew, he was dead or missing and his sudden reappearance after over a week would raise a lot of questions that didn't have any good answers.

The solution to this problem came from a very unexpected place.

In the days since my first visit, Rebecca and I had just sort of gravitated towards one another. Maybe it was the similarities of our experiences, maybe it was the fact that she was the only other woman my age who wasn't a bitch, maybe it was just circumstance. In any case, I found her to be charming, intelligent, and to have a surprising level of insight into the human condition.

I often found myself sharing meals with her and her children in her home, or having her visit my office in the vault for a nightcap and some late night discussion.

Things came to a head one night as I returned to the vault.

…

I despise people sometimes, I truly, truly do.

My day had been a shit show from start to finish. In the first case, a salvage operation to a cabin a little ways off from Sanctuary led to one of those damn bloatflies blowing up in my face, dumping viscera and tiny radioactive larvae all over me. Am I squeamish, no, does that change the fact that it is not pleasant, hell no. Getting back to Sanctuary, after a quick wash and a change of clothes, immediately I had to arbitrate between Preston and Ben duking it out over how we would handle future deployments of our currently nonexistent forces. Important yes, but until we had something, we were basically arguing about the placement of the deck chairs before we figured out how to make the ship float.

Following that was a meeting with Marcy over what we were willing to trade the next time a caravan came through, with Marcy in her usual, delightfully bitch-from-hell, mood. The only activity that had proven even remotely enjoyable was running Asher through my old operations, listening to what he would do and correcting his mistakes.

The long and short of it, my day sucked. My bra was already off by the time the elevator trundled to a stop. My only thoughts as I trudged through the old overseer's escape tunnel to my office were of the glass of scotch I was going to pour myself and of the long hot shower I was going to take before bed.

Then the door to my office slid open and a whole lot of new thoughts.

Rebecca was sitting on my desk, legs crossed, hair down, doing a pretty damn good impression of Lady Godiva.

"Becca… uh… this is a surprise." Not exactly me at my smoothest, but attractive naked women are my weakness.

Rebecca stood up, giving me an even better view, and sashayed over to me, one hand hooking around the back of my neck and the other taking the bra from my hand and tossing it off to the side.

She offered a minxy grin "Here's the deal, you are stressed as hell, and considering you're basically the leader here, that's a bad thing. Not to mention, I'm horny, and from the microfusion cells set to oscillate I found next to your bed, I'm willing to bet you are to."

That brought a flush to my cheeks that hadn't been there in the past two centuries. When I opened my mouth to respond, she immediately hushed me by sticking her finger between my lips and onto my tongue. Her skin tasted surprisingly like honey. "This is purely physical right now, it can get complicated later if we both want it to, but for now, it's just sex."

Her eyes betrayed a mischievous twinkle, "I'm good at my job and I can tell what a person wants in bed. And you, my dear Madison, are an easy one to see, when you're with me, you don't get a say in anything. All you have to do is relax, do as your told, and let me take the lead. Now, pay attention, this is the only time you get to have input on this."

Her finger traced idle circles along the top of my tongue. "If you say no, I get dressed and this never happened, things go on just as they were. If you say yes, then when we're together, you're my toy. And I'm going to take my toy and have a long hot shower with you, clean you inside and out until I feel like you're presentable." Her grin widened, "And then we're going to turn you into a proper whore."

"So, yes or no?"

I am a weak, weak, person.

I nodded.

The next few hours were spent doing a lot of things that one doesn't speak of in polite company, and that I'm certainly not going to speak of to you.

In the pleasurable post-coital haze, our discussion somehow worked around to the problem of Lexington. And specifically the problem of infiltrating the factory and gaining human intelligence, and Becca came up with a rather interesting idea.

"Why don't I do it?"

 **…**

 **Okay guys, I might add more to this note later, but I'm busy. Today is the day I move to UIS.**

 **I know this is kind of an odd format, but I didn't want this to be another massive infodump chapter, well, more than it already is.**

 **I don't know if I'll be able to update next week, like I said, I'm going to be incredibly busy for a while at least.**

 **R &R people.**


	22. Chapter 22

"What?"

I sat up, staring at Rebecca, not believing what she'd just suggested. "You can't be serious."

Rebecca never skipped a beat, "I'm entirely serious."

My kneejerk reaction was purely emotional. "You have two children, and you're all they have left. If you die, they have nothing, no one."

"Then I'd better put on a good show." Before I could answer again, she rested her hand on my thigh. "Listen Madison, I know it sounds a little bit out of left field, but I can do this."

I shifted my mind back to the position of an operative, brushed her hand off of my thigh, and looked at her with the eyes of someone who hadn't just had great sex for the past couple of hours. "Tell me why you're the best person for infiltration."

As I shed my skin, she shed hers for the veneer of consummate professionalism. Her shoulders shifted back, her spine straightened, and her gaze levelled. She looked confident, competent, and intelligent, not an easy look to pull off in this sense while naked. "I've been putting up fronts my entire life. Any girl can spread her legs, so can any guy for that matter. And plenty of both are willing for twenty caps or less, if you want to pull 200 an hour, you have to be more than nice tits and a firm ass, though I'm more than gifted enough in both regards."

She ran her hands over her, admittedly, generous bust. Personally, DD cups aren't my preference, marshmallow hell is fun, but I prefer something more manageable. Even as we were discussing this, my jaw still hurt. Ming had been a 34C. "You have to be able to give these people more than what they want, you have to be able to see what they want even if they don't know they want it. You have to make them forget they're paying you, make them believe the fantasy. That's all I have to do with these raiders, just make them believe the fantasy."

She levelled me with a hard copper stare, "I can do this Madison, trust me."

I met her gaze with an equal intensity.

For the play I wanted to make, it was important that none of the raiders see my face or hear my voice. Mikhail was too distinctive, Asher was too familiar, Ben was a ghoul, Preston was too… Preston, Marcy, Jun, Sturges, Murphy, none of them even came close to being capable of this sort of operation.

In the end, Rebecca really was the only choice.

"Alright, be ready tomorrow morning, we'll meet with Asher and go over everything you'll need to know. We're prepping you for two days minimum on this, we've got to get you briefed, establish a signaling plan, an emergency assault plan, a great many plans."

The grin was back, "Perfect." She got off the bed and began pulling on her clothes, "I have to go make sure that Marina got James to bed okay. We'll talk in the morning."

And then she was out the door.

And then I was alone.

Again.

…

"Can I make it clear how much I don't like this plan?"

"For once we're in agreement Preston, but this is the only real option that we have." I looked up from the hologram on the table, it was more detailed now that we had full access to the network, with only a four minute signal delay. The sat phones were up and they, thankfully, had no delay.

"What exactly is the plan again? We're better armed now, we can outfit two men with full suits of power armor and miniguns, back them up with Goris, and provide four people with normal weapons to back them up. They can't wall themselves in, we can get in through the sewer tunnel before they can blow it, if they can blow it." Preston folded his arms, glaring from his position in the corner. "Tell me how that's not better than sending literally the only person here with kids depending on them in alone."

He did actually have a point, but there was one problem he wasn't taking into account. A point Mikhail was happy to make as he strolled through the door. "She's not worried about them holing up, she's worried about them spreading out, Lexington's too big for us to do a full sweep, if we hit them in force, after the first dozen, the rest of the trusy will scatter. If they maintain discipline," that got a snort of derision from most of the room, "They could fall back to the city and launch fading attacks, then all they have to do is make a nuisance of themselves until, they get lucky, our fusion cores run out or we leave. Then they just move back in. Even if we were to hold position there, they could make large scale salvage next to impossible." He threw me a meaningful look, "Saigon all over again."

Preston was unmoved, "Yeah, but we both know they're not gonna do that. If they run, they'll just run."

Once again Preston was right, "But that's the problem, what's the point in just driving them out?"

And Preston gave me the, now familiar, look like I'd just asked the stupidest possible question possible. "They're driven out, they don't have walls to hide behind, they don't have a good position to base themselves out of. They're dealt with."

"You're right, they are, but tell me Preston, you've been knee deep in this sort of shit since you were a kid. What happens after you drive them out? After they run, after you've cleared the area and left?" I already knew the answer, but as I'd learned, engaging with Preston was an exercise in rhetoric.

He knew the answer I was looking for, he also knew that it was the only answer that he could give. "Eventually another bunch would move in, and eventually we'd have to come back and do it again."

"And even disregarding that, even if they don't come back, they will splinter into smaller groups, and some of those groups will be reabsorbed into larger groups in other fortified locations, and those that don't will still menace caravans and isolated travelers. Until we have the resources to hold locations like the Corvega factory and Lexington, and to sweep up the splinter groups, then we have to wage a war of annihilation, no survivors." It was a hard truth, and it was in direct conflict with a directive I wanted in place before I left, but for the moment it was important. I was expecting resistance from Preston.

And surprisingly, I found none. "Alright, I agree with you, letting them go would only leave them to kill innocents." I won't lie, that actually knocked me off balance for a half second. Before I could respond though, he continued, "But that's not all this is about, you're never that simple, what's the game?"

That actually got a smirk out of Mikhail, "He is learning."

I hit him with a quick glare at the betrayal, but moved on quickly. "Asher tells me that Jared is one of the major players among the raiders, his group is indisputably the largest concentrated group, and at the point of Asher's defection had steady recruiting numbers. If he actually had some leadership skills, he could turn his group into a force to be reckoned with." I waved a hand dismissively, "but that's beside the point, basically, we need an example, and he's perfect for it. If we want people to believe that the Minutemen are back and we're for real, we need something that we can point to and say, look at what we can do, look at what we bring to the table."

Surprisingly, Preston was nodding along with me. "Good, you're right, we need to let the people know that we can keep them safe." He paused, "But I still don't like the fact that we're putting a mother at risk."

This was actually weird for me. Maybe my arguments were actually getting through to him. I was about to remind him that there would be other mothers and fathers under his command in the future, but I thought better of it.

Mikhail broke in before an uncomfortable silence could fall. "Where is your malen'kiy volk anyway Madison?"

Little wolf, well, it was better than little defector at least. "He's with Rebecca, filling her in on every possible detail that she might need to know. This meeting is strictly to run through the military portions of the operation. We'll fill Rebecca in on all of the details after we have worked everything out, she needs to focus on preparing her cover." I gestured to the table, "Mikhail, I brought this to you last night, what have you got?"

Mikhail was spetznaz, he was more adept in handling the armed support aspects of this sort of operation, thus I put him in charge of handling this portion of the planning. "Da, I spent the night working up an operational plan."

He gestured to the hologram on the table, currently showing the layout of Lexington, with red dots marking moving figures. "Goris will move in from the northwest, drawing in as many raiders as possible, in the confusion, our operative will join the fight, and at a signal from you Madison, he will break off contact. Then he will retreat and evade the enemy until he is certain that they have given up pursuit, then he will rendezvous with the rest of us here."

At his cue, I moved the hologram out, bringing the focus over a larger area. He pointed to the dump above Lexington, "The assault group will be positioned to the northeast, using this landfill for concealment." He gave us both a meaningful look, "If things go wrong, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to carry out a rescue."

It was true, this was the reason I didn't want Rebecca here for this. She didn't already knew this was going to be dangerous, she knew what could happen, she didn't need to be psyched out by odds.

Mikhail continued, pointing to the skyway, "Madison, you'll act as forward observer, I've looked at all the angles, unless you have any ideas, we're just going to have to work on a deadline system."

I moved across the table from him, tradecraft was my expertise even more than his. "I agree, we'll play this like Hollow Temple in Vilnius, at eight hours we go on alert, at twelve, we assume the worst and go in hot for recovery."

Preston looked at us both in confusion, "I thought you said rescue was unlikely?"

Mikhail turned to him with solemn eyes, "It is, we're talking about recovery."

The minuteman shrugged, "What's the difference?"

"You rescue a person, you recover a corpse."

"Oh," The minuteman retreated, fairly subdued.

I ignored Preston and focused on the operation, "I'll keep in contact with you over the comms, if things seem to be going insane before the deadline, I'll put the assault into motion early."

Mikhail nodded, "Agreed, if that's all, I'll set to preparing the assault force and talk to Goris about the infiltration coverage."

"Good, while you're doing that, I'll brief Rebecca on exactly what her role in this operation is going to be."

Can I say again how much I don't like this plan?

…

If there is one part of espionage that I absolutely cannot stand, it is the waiting.

The majority of covert action is very similar to the majority of military action, hurry up and wait. Just as a soldier in the military learns this, I have learned it.

That does not mean that I like it.

"Avenger to Whisper, Aphrodite is in the sea. Typhon is returning to Etna."

Aphrodite was Rebecca, in the sea meant that she was in play. Typhon was Goris, returning to Etna meant that he had broken off engagement and was moving to the forward operations post at that landfill as soon as he was sure he had evaded any pursuers.

That had been roughly an hour ago, I had located her pretty quickly. To my pleasant surprise, it took me a few minutes to find her among the crowd of terrified raiders, if it was hard for me to pick her out, it would be even harder for the raiders. Then again, it's a lot more difficult to ID someone from a rooftop than it is when you're face to face.

Thankfully, she seemed to have integrated with the raiders pretty easily, or at least without incident. I lost site of her when they entered the factory.

So now all I could do was monitor the factory from my position on the skyway.

During these periods, operatives are trained to make the most of the time, go over your intel, remember your training, prepare your equipment, but all I could do was think of James and Marina losing their mother so soon after losing everything else. This never used to be a problem for me, but then again, I'd kept to a tight circle of comrades, most of us didn't have dependents, most of us were the closest thing to dependents for each other.

I went over the plan again and again, looking for ways I could have made it better, made it safer, made it where I didn't have to put Rebecca on the tightrope, but I'll be honest, I couldn't find any.

The plan was simple, at least relative to the kind of operation I was used to. Rebecca was made to look as similar as possible to the raiders in Lexington, not a difficult endeavor, we had plenty of bits of raider armor stripped off of corpses, dirty her up a bit, give her a pipe rifle, and she could fit the mold of a raider, albeit a very hot one, fairly easily. According to Asher, the size of the group and the steady stream of recruits made it impossible for everyone to know everyone. Once Goris did his thing and shredded a patrol or two, she just slipped in during the confusion. No problems there.

The part that worried me was what was going on inside. As far as undercover work went, her job was as low risk as it got. Still, when you're dealing with psychopaths, that's not saying much. She was to get inside, get a general idea of the overall psychological state, locate Lonnie, who Asher identified as best for my purposes, get a general idea of where she could usually be found, and get out. Secondary to that, I had provided her with one of the Robco master tapes, I'd noticed at least one turret they'd set up, if she could find the terminal controlling the turrets and insert the tape, once we moved to phase three, I would be able to take over the turrets myself, but that wasn't much of an issue.

She was armed with a pipe pistol and a med-x syringe with a fast acting sedative, if things went to plan, she wouldn't need either of them.

Still there were a million things that could go wrong and all it would take was one.

And if I was completely honest, there was nothing I could do to impact it. Nothing, but wait.

Another hour rolled by.

Then another two.

Then three.

It was just before the first deadline when I saw movement at the exfiltration point, the broken pipe that Asher had mentioned. I made my way down from my observation post, like I said, jet packs come in handy.

To my relief, I found Rebecca scrambling out of the pipe.

But she wasn't alone.

 **…..**

 **Hey guys, This one was kind of rushed, I've been pushing like hell to get this done by my deadline. College is a hell of a time consumer.**

 **It's not exactly what I was hoping for, but as is often the case, it's what I was able to come up with.**

 **Tell me what you guys think, and if anyone of my readers is at University of Illinois Springfield, PM me and hit me up, I love in-person feedback. You can usually find me in the PAC or at my apartment in Bluebell.**

 **Sidenote: any weirdos (not the cool kind), I feel comfortable presenting this info because, A:I'm a blackbelt just shy of my second degree, B: one of my roommates is a marine, the other just came out of a stint in the Republic of Korea Army. Try shit at your peril.**

 **Either way, R &R people. **


	23. Chapter 23

"What the hell are you doing?"

Rebecca was standing in the middle of the pipe, looking no worse for wear, aside from being a bit sweatier and having what was either a large bruise or a hickey on her neck. But that wasn't what concerned me.

"The job, now help me with her."

Slung over her shoulder in a haphazard fireman's carry was an unconscious woman with one side of her head shaved, looked to be in her mid twenties, and very strongly resembled Asher's descriptions of Lonnie.

I moved to take some of the dead weight off of her shoulders. "What happened to just intelligence gathering?"

"I saw the opportunity and I took my swing." We began moving up the side of the ditch

I shook my head, we could talk about this later, when we weren't in hostile territory. I tapped the comm button on my headset, "All teams, Aphrodite has stepped onto the beach, and she's decided we're skipping to phase three. Support element is to move to Olympus, exempting Typhon. ETA to rendezvous point is twelve minutes."

Two clicks came over the frequency, communication confirmed. I was keeping Goris back as a precaution, but the satellite scans had allowed me to pick out a route that kept us away from most of the hot spots. Still you never knew what was going to happen, particularly with untrained nutjobs who refused to maintain a cohesive operations schedule.

Moving through the streets of a dead city with a raider held between us, I asked her, "So, you want to tell me what happened in there?"

"Get me drunk, then maybe."

…

That was a task that I'd have to put off.

The immediate problem was the bit of theater I had set up.

The stage I picked was the room where I woke up, it had the right ambiance. Well, it did after Sturges and I managed to re-rig the lighting. Ask any stage manager, they'll tell you how important lighting is, it makes or breaks the production.

And for this show, I went with a classic, a single bright bulb over the chair in the center of the room creating a circle of light and obscuring the rest of the room in darkness. Cliché, but clichés become that way for a reason.

My casting was a bit thin, but I could make do. Mikhail, Ben, Preston, and Asher would handle the first act, with Mikhail taking center stage.

And of course, any good production needs a director sitting behind the camera, in this case the one hidden on top of the cryopod next to our captive audience.

"Just finished settin' everything up. We're good to go." Sturges came into my office via the reactor tunnel.

"Good, is Asher okay?" I didn't like putting him in this position, thankfully he didn't seem to have much of a problem with claustrophobia.

"He's good, I pulled a few of the pipes, so he's got air. And I checked the switch, it'll work just fine when his bit comes." He pointed at the little orb that now projected the camera's view onto the wall. "Damn, there anything that sweet piece can't do?"

"Just a simple projector, now hush, the show's about to start."

I grinned, I couldn't help myself.

"Action!"

…

Lonnie was in the center of the spotlight, bound to her chair by zip tie, a black bag over her head. The sedatives we'd pumped into her since getting back to Sanctuary were finally wearing off and she was beginning to struggle.

Enter stage left, Mikhail followed by two full suits of power armor. I'm not normally into guys, but even I've got to admit that the Russian is quite a sight in his tailored, tsar green, dress uniform.

"Who's there, where the fuck am I, tell me what the fuck is going on or I swear I'll fucking cut your dicks off!" She was angry, but the fear was there, perfect.

Mikhail didn't answer he merely paced around her for one rotation, then backhanded her hard enough to knock the chair over, her with it.

"Tishina, whore."

She writhed at her bonds like a fish out of water. "What the fuck are you saying?"

He kicked her in the stomach, not as hard as the first hit. "Do not speak you vonjuchij bitch."

"What the hell do you want?" She was screaming now.

Mikhail dragged her and the chair upright and ripped her bag off. She blinked, bleary eyed from the sudden glare. Mikhail gave her a moment to take in the contents of their little island of light. The uniform, the men in power armor, she wouldn't know what it all meant, but it would tell her she was dealing with people who meant business

"Wh-who are you?"

The fear was kicking in now, this wasn't a woman used to being helpless, but she wasn't weak. Climbing to the top of an organization like this one wasn't for the demure. She had a healthy fear of torture and death, if I wanted her for information, that would be enough, but I needed more for what I had planned.

Mikhail brought himself to his full height, filling as much space as he could with his polar-bear frame. From where Lonnie was, he must have appeared truly world-encompassing. "I am General Winter, supreme commander of the Long Night, the greatest standing army in the world." He drove his finger into her chest, "You are a pathetic savage."

He was playing up his accent, he liked to do that during interrogations, made him seem more alien, more like the other.

Her eyes widened, she'd undoubtedly heard the story from the raider Mikhail had tortured and sent to Lexington, maybe she'd even seen what he did to him. She'd certainly seen the mutilated corpses that we'd been sprinkling around her stomping grounds, perfect.

"Look, I'll tell you what you whatever you want."

Mikhail threw his head back, letting out a hearty laugh in that way only a Russian can. "And what could you have that we want? Your little comrade has given us so much already."

He stepped to the edge of the circle and appeared to manipulate the control panel on the cryopod that I had emerged from what felt like a life time ago.

That was the cue, and Asher hit his mark perfectly.

The light in the pod came on, Asher covered in frost that was actually chalk and glitter started pounding on the window the same way I had. "H-h-help! P-please, just let-t me out!" He was screaming and thrashing, "I-I t-think-k I'm d-dying."

A little melodramatic perhaps, but it did the job.

Then Mikhail flipped another disconnected switch and the light went out, and Asher went quiet again. "Perhaps we thaw him out for more when we are done with you, da?"

To my surprise, she impressed me. "He's just a kid I found in a bar, he doesn't know anything, let him go and I'll tell you whatever you want."

She knew she wasn't getting released, so she was trying to save him, a noble gesture. If Asher himself hadn't argued against it, I might have considered going in the other direction I could take this plan.

Still, better this way, when you're throwing an elbow, you don't pull it on impact.

"You will tell me whatever I desire regardless." Mikhail turned back towards Lonnie and the camera. "Tell me, did you see the messenger that we sent to you?"

"Yes." The answer was tight, but the gulp said more than enough.

"Then you know what will be done to you." He took a firm hold on her arm, "Do you know how frostbite works savage?" The grip tightened, "The cold causes ice tissues to form in the tissue, it starts in the skin, you will lose feeling, then it will go deeper, to the muscles, then the blood, and the bone. Your skin will turn red, then white, then black. And when it has reached its peak, when the appendage has been frozen all the way through." He released his grip and slammed his fist against the pod behind him, "Then we will shatter it."

He let his inner wolf out in the grin he gave her. "I will do this with each part of your body, one piece at a time, until you are nothing but little shards on the floor."

…

I turned to Sturges, "Tell Rebecca to get into costume, it's time for the second act."

The mechanic did as he was bid, and I turned toward the door.

It was time for Lonnie to meet Lucy Ferris.

…

Act Two, the leading lady enters stage left, followed by her trusty companion.

The door opened and I stepped into the room, my trench coat was black, it covered a bright red dress shirt and black slacks. My hair was dyed crimson, a flawless ruby hung from a gold chain around my neck, a pair of obsidian studs sat in my earlobes, a gold pocket watch sat in my jacket pocket, connected to a small loop on the inside of my coat.

All eyes were on me when I came through the door. All eyes except for Lonnie's

Lonnie's were focused on the background character, on Rebecca.

Rebecca was standing behind me, wearing my nanosuit, my goggles, my mask, my swords, and the red lights on each were turned to the highest possible setting. She looked like a demon in the dark.

She looked like the Reaper.

"Holy shit, it's real." Lonnie's voice was barely a whisper, but she was gaping like a fish. She must have heard the story from my little present.

I pretended not to notice her, hitting Mikhail with the most intense glare in my arsenal. "General, what exactly do you think you are doing with my prisoner?"

Mikhail countered my glare with a vicious smirk, "She is in my facility Director, that makes her my prisoner, to do with as I please."

I shook my head slightly, in the same way I would if an intern had gotten me the wrong coffee order for the third time in a week. Then I reached into my coat and produced a folded up piece of paper. "I have the backing of High Command. If you have a problem, then take it up with them."

Mikhail's grin fell into a scowl and he stormed over, snatching the paper from my hand, offering a quick conspiratorial grin while he was out of view from Lonnie, then the scowl was back and he threw the paper to the ground. "Suka, fine, you want the savage, take her."

Then he stormed past me, Preston and Ben stomping after him. The door sealed shut behind us and I stepped into the light, looking at Lonnie like a bug under a magnifying glass.

I turned to Rebecca, "Knock her out, I've still got a meeting with the Sea Lords before I have time to deal with her." That had been a hard line to work out, the same with the titles, they needed to sound impressive, but they had to be something she could understand enough to be impressed by.

"Wait, ju-agh," Rebecca slipped behind Lonnie and jammed a needle full of fast acting sedatives into her carotid artery. A few seconds later, she was unconscious.

Once we were sure she was out like Emma on a Saturday night, I turned and yanked the release on Asher's pod.

The kid came stumbling out, the past two weeks had been good to him. Between the shaving, regular showers, regular meals, and lack of drug use, he was actually filling out into a handsome young man. The implants were taking his physical training to the next level, he wasn't in military shape, but he was getting there, by now he could pass for a second string quarterback on the average pre-war high school team.

"How'd I do?"

I patted him on the shoulder, "A bit over the top, but it did the job for this one, we'll work on it." I paused, "Are you sure about her? I'm willing to reconsider after seeing her in here. This is the point of no return."

Asher was quiet, that was a good thing, deciding to consign someone you know to death should never be an easy thing. When he finally spoke, his voice was steady. "Yes, I'm sure, Lonnie's not crazy like Jared, but she could never survive in the world we're trying to make, she's a raider, she'll never be anything else."

I nodded, "Alright, get yourself a shower and get suited up, Mikhail's going to want to run you through drills. You'll be in Wolf Pack for phase 4."

He winced at the mention of drills, but I could see the little glint of pride in his eyes. "Yes ma'am."

I couldn't help but smile as he left, the kid was a diamond in the rough, he'd make a hell of an operator one day. Then I turned back to the matter at hand, "Come on, let's get her into my office."

…

Act 3.

Setting, my office.

Cast, me as Lucy Ferris, Rebecca as the Reaper, and Lonnie as herself.

And no, before you get any ideas, this isn't the final act for this operation. This little production is of the Shakespearian five-act variety.

I chose my office for the same reason I chose to walk in with a paper full of random scribblings, everything about me had to scream Upper Management.

Nightmares were scary, the thought of being slowly tortured to death by a huge Russian thug is scary, but neither serve as a good leverage on their own. But what is feared more, the person who holds the leash of the nightmares. This is the one that you talk to, the one who can make or take your life with one word, because of this, this is the one that you will do anything for because they're the only person that can keep you safe.

Of course, I wasn't going to keep her safe, but she didn't need to know that.

Lonnie was slumped in the chair in front of my desk, the sedative was a far lighter dose than what we'd been using on her while we prepped for the introduction.

I honestly couldn't bring myself to feel any hate for her. I'd expected I would, usually I feel a fair bit of disgust for these third world thugs when I get them face to face. This one, I couldn't, maybe it was just the fact that the world had been blown to hell, maybe it was what Asher had said about her. She was a raider, and she couldn't survive in a world where that wasn't an option. I could sympathize with that, more than a few people had said similar about me, and I'd certainly made use of those sort of people, former soldiers mostly, as disposables. Disposables were operatives that could be sent on operations and any connections they had to the US were easily denied.

After about a half hour, she started to stir, and the intermission was over, it was time to get back to the show.

I picked up the dead phone on the desk and said something official sounding into it. "Yes, we need the Eighth division moved down to Baltimore, yes, all 50,000 of them. The operational timetable begins next week."

I put the phone down, and pretended to only just notice her waking up. "Ah good, you're finally awake."

She wasn't bound, but she didn't move, Rebecca standing behind me ensured that. When she did speak, she was quiet, tentative, "What do you want with me?"

I steepled my fingers, "Straight to the point, I respect that. I am Lucy Ferris, Director of Intelligence and Special Operations for Task Force Long Night, we are a joint Russian-American task force created shortly before the Great War consisting of the most elite units of our nations' respective armed forces." I smiled, "But none of that is important at the moment."

I gave her a second to ask the question. "Then what is?"

My smile grew wider.

"The fact that I am the only hope that you have of getting yourself and at least some of your friends out of this alive."

 **…**

 **Okay guys, I warned you about this, my updates going forward will be spottier than a Dalmatian playing twister.**

 **I have three research papers due in the next two weeks, so I'm going to be busy as all hell. I'll work on this as much as I can, but just so you guys know.**

 **Honestly I had to cut this one short to get it up this Friday.**

 **Either way, R &R people.**


	24. Chapter 24

"What do you want?"

I knew what she meant, but I was going to make her say it. "I want many things, perhaps you should clarify."

Lonnie knew I was playing with her, I'll give her credit for that, but she had no choice but to play along. "You said that you're my only hope of getting out alive, what do you want for it?"

So, she was decently perceptive, good. I rested my hands on the desk, "Only your co-operation."

Her eyes narrowed, "for what?"

I had her on the hook, she knew I was the one in control, but now she was curious. The key here was getting her to believe not only that she could survive this, but that she could profit off of it. "The organization I represent currently holds most of what remains of Europe," I paused again, "That's the land across the ocean."

She looked slightly indignant, "I know that, I read it somewhere."

So books had survived, good. "Good, then you understand the resources we have at our back. General Winter and I represent the vanguard of our forces, the tip of the blade if you will. We are to secure the Commonwealth to be used as a staging area from which we can take the entirety of the Eastern Seaboard."

"I still don't see what that has to do with me."

I offered her a purposefully-strained patient smile. "I'm getting to that point. In case you haven't noticed, the General and I have very different management styles. General Winter is a fine military commander, but he is just that, a military commander. He is a man with nothing but a rather large hammer and absolutely everything appears to be a nail. He wishes to carry this out under his standard protocol, rape, pillage, and murder until everyone in his way is dead or imprisoned."

Her eyes went distant for a moment, most likely picturing the various trinkets we'd spread around Lexington and imagining it happening to her. Finally, she was back in the moment, "And what do you want?"

There we go, "I have a desire to be promoted to the post of Chief of Overall Operations in the Western Theater. The best way of achieving this goal is to be able to present the Commonwealth to them on a silver platter. Preferably without General Winter and his forces to share the credit with. To do this, I will need to use local forces, and that's where you come in."

She was starting to connect the dots, but she wasn't quite there. "Why me?"

"I could attempt to charm you, but I find honesty to be so much more refreshing." That was only half a lie. "I encountered your people in Lexington, under a man calling himself Gristle."

That struck a chord, just like Asher said it would. "I hope you killed that fucker slow."

I let my smile spread out, "Don't worry, I can assure you he died in great pain. He didn't offer me a moment to negotiate. The same can be said of you other friends, Bear and Ack-Ack. I'm afraid we were forced to kill them all. Your young friend provided us with the information about you, after the proper encouragement." No need to make myself look soft. "My colleague, the general, and I have philosophical differences over how to operate, much like you and your own colleague, Jared I believe his name is."

That caught her attention, it shouldn't have considering she believed that I had tortured information out of Asher. Still, people don't really think things through when you're gaslighting them. Still, I pressed her, "He is a drug addicted fool, desperately and obsessively hunting for a nonexistent ability that would likely prove useless even if it were to exist. Said hunt is already killing your own people.' I rested my head on my fist, "You are a savage, but you are apparently a straightforward savage, if you want something, you kill whoever has it, and take it off their corpse."

Insert dramatic pause here.

And the line she's waiting for, "You would be a far better leader than Jared, and thus you would serve my purpose."

There it was, the spark in her eye. She saw a way out of this, and she even saw a way to profit out of it. "And what do would we need to do?"

I had her, "Well first, of course, you need to recruit your cohorts, those that won't support you must die. Anyone who will not support the Long Night dies, we do not leave stragglers."

Considering what she did with Asher, a tiny part of me wondered if she'd have a problem with this. As in many cases, here too the minority lost. "Of course they fucking do, anyone who doesn't back me gets their eyes gouged out and shoved up their ass."

Delightful, still, this presented another opportunity I'd been waiting for. "So you want some kind of display of brutality?" I shook my head slightly, "No, I think it would be better for you to direct them to my people, it can be done quietly."

Certainly an option, but not the one I was hoping for. Thankfully, she took the bait. "No no, hear me out," she leaned forward, now that she thought she was getting out of this, she was getting some of her confidence back. "I know these guys, I know how they think, if I… if you want to be taken seriously, we need to show them we're the real fuckin' thing."

The best way to convince someone to do something is to make them think it's their idea. I leaned back in my chair, "So a public execution is necessary then, how would we go about it?"

She was filling in the blanks on her own. "I'll send my crew around and have 'em tell everybody Jared wants 'em all together in the big room he hosts all the big meetings in. Then when they're all together, we'll bring out Jared and cut his nuts off and jam 'em down his throat. Anyone who doesn't wanna join me gets the same."

What was it with this woman and forcing spherical body parts into orifices? I'm a fetishist and debatably a high functioning sociopath, and even I find that strange. Asher's argument was making more sense by the minute. "My people can handle securing Jared, and of course throughout this process I will be with you." I showed a slash of teeth somewhere between a smile and a snarl. "I'm afraid I don't trust you yet."

She nodded vigorously, I was using her, she thought she was using me. A true Romeo and Juliet relationship, except only one of us was going to die at the end.

"We will discuss this further on approach." I gave a small wave to Rebecca who stepped forward.

Lonnie held up herhands, "no, you don't have to…" but then the needle was in her neck and Rebecca was pushing down on the plunger. A few gurgles later and she was off into the void of Morpheus.

"Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay," I mused.

"The worst is Death, and Death will have his day.

 **…**

 **Okay guys, really short one this time, I'm probably going to take a few weeks off for the next one, these rushed chapters never really turn out as well as they could in my opinion. And besides Lexington is certainly one that cannot be rushed. The sheer number of chapters it's taken me to get here is more than proof of that.**

 **On the upside, we're one or two chapters from getting out of Sanctuary. Finally, I like the minutemen well enough, but they're not the focus of this story, at least not for a while.**

 **Either way R &R people.**


End file.
